A real-life Tooting Popular Front has dropped plans to challenge Sadiq Khan’s seat in the next election, it has emerged.

The Tooting Life Forum Party, which formed online, decided there was not enough interest in the idea to get it off the ground.

The group had been likened to the Tooting Popular Front from the 1970s sitcom Citizen Smith, but members insisted theirs was much more serious.

Last week the leader, who uses the screen name TommyB, wrote: “Well I think it is pretty safe to say a new Tooting Life Forum Party will not be happening.

“The simple fact of the matter is that when it comes to it, people just don't want to do things. They just want to talk.”

He claimed he had secured numerous financial backers, but many of the “activists” who initially expressed interest did not respond to his emails.

Other forum members remarked that people’s views were too different to form any policies.

It will mean one less problem to worry about for Mr Khan, who is due to defend his Tooting seat in May, when the election is likely to be called.