Boris Johnson launched a scattergun attack on the SNP as he urged voters to “chuck Salmond overboard”.
The Mayor of London, who will stand as an MP in next year’s general election, hit out at the “Londonophobia” of some pro-independence campaigners.
To a strained smile from David Cameron, he told delegates at the Tory party conference in Birmingham they had “permission to purr” a reference to the Prime Minister’s accidental revealing of the Queen’s alleged reaction to last month’s No vote.
Mr Johnson said: “I noticed over the last few weeks and months that there was a slight note not just of Anglophobia but of Londonophobia in some of the rhetoric of our friends in the Scottish Nationalist Party.
“A suggestion that Londoners were culturally, politically and economically divorced from the rest of the country.
“And to listen to some of the London-bashing, you might think that London was a modern Babylon with billionaires being plied with hot towels in the top-deck club class of their swanky new buses.”
He added: “If someone tells you that all this means London is somehow different from the rest of the country and above all if they try to imply that what happens in London is irrelevant to the economic fortunes of our nation, then I would respectfully have to tell them that they are talking through the back of their neck.
“Because at this conference we can say with pride that London remains not just the capital of England, but thanks to the wisdom of a clear majority of Scots, it is the capital of Britain and the capital of the United Kingdom and will remain so for our lifetimes. You have permission to purr.”
He also advocated blocking Scottish MPs from voting on legislation in Westminster which don’t apply north of the border.
“I want to end the nonsense that allows Labour MPs to vote on English laws and only the Conservatives will deliver that,” he said.