No mayor should ever serve three terms, Ken

Yet there are few real credits to set at his door. The prosperity of the metropolis has been due not to him but to Thatcherite privatisation and deregulation of financial services, policies which he earned his political spurs opposing, however much it now suits him to pretend otherwise. For him to claim an iota of credit for London's boom is cheek.

His two most substantive initiatives were an attempt to stop Gordon Brown's privatisation of the Tube and the congestion charge. He was right on the first but failed to win, despite hiring Britain's most costly public servant, Bob Kiley. Hurling a billion pounds at the buses hardly compensated for running what is now the most expensive public transit system in the world.

As for the congestion charge, it has proved a very expensive way of collecting a tax, one that has been imitated nowhere else. Meanwhile, Livingstone's failure to co-ordinate London's utilities has left the streets more dug-up and shambolic than ever.

Property developers may be able to con him with "soft bribes" of a few council flats in return for pepper-potting London with massive luxury blocks, referred to by the Standard's Rowan Moore as "privately controlled spaces outside which is a sea of public grot".

The scandal of the £2.6 billion blown on the so-called London Development Agency ("creating" 80,000 jobs in a city supposedly short of labour) would have gone unnoticed had it not been for this newspaper. This is not honest government.

At innumerable elections rallies, Livingstone has offered no vision for London's future. He cannot handle questions on London's population growth, its appearance or its street crime. Any fool can tax-and-spend on police, but London's force is still overwhelmingly officeand car-bound, to the fury of its citizens.

Then last week, Livingstone admitted he had lied about the Olympics, explaining "exactly how I plotted to ensnare the government" into spending double his estimate on London infrastructure.

If a £9 billion wasteland of unwanted stadiums, sheds and concrete walkways in the East End is his idea of valuefor-money urban renewal, that is reason enough to vote him from office.

In a nutshell, Livingstone has not been an inspirational Mayor, least of all one meriting a third term. Of his opponents, the Liberal Democrat Brian Paddick has not begun to cut the mustard.

Johnson is undeniably untested, but he has survived the campaign with his wildness curbed and only the occasional mishap, as over his estimates of the cost of bus renewal. He would be nothing like as dangerous a choice as four more years of Livingstone.

Johnson has thought respectably about crime policy - including restorative justice that Ken has ignored. He wishes to reform development control and restore borough autonomy. He should certainly reduce the doubleinflation tax rises of Livingstone's regime. Above all, he is well placed to honour HL Menken's adage of urban democracy, a lways " chuck the rapscallions out".

London's election has been unprecedented news. It has featured daily in the national press and on television and even drawn reporters from overseas - hilariously in this week's New Yorker. There have been a dozen packed debates between the contestants. Such a festival of participation is unprecedented in the meek history of British local government.

Those who deplore direct election as un-British, who dislike "personality in politics" and despise localism, have been shown the door. London's Ken v Boris show has given British democracy a shot in the arm. Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and other cities should be eating their hearts out.

Civic pride may still be a raucous, bawling infant. But it is alive and kicking. Nothing will serve it better than a high turnout and a vote for change on Thursday. Go for Boris.