Does Boris Johnson merit a second term?

If, as seems increasingly likely, Labour's candidate is Ken Livingstone, Mr Johnson will face a formidable opponent. Mr Livingstone's campaign in 2008 was lacklustre: he seemed tired next to his idiosyncratic challenger. But in 2012 it will be Mr Johnson who will be weighed down with the burdens of office, notably some savage spending cuts. Meanwhile Mr Livingstone already seems to have recovered much of his bounce.

Mr Johnson has had a largely trouble-free mayoralty to date, aside from the embarrassing departure of a string of poorly chosen aides. He is a larger-than-life figure of the kind a global city needs. He has been a vocal and independent champion for London with central government, defying his party's line on immigration and arguing passionately for Crossrail and Tube upgrades. He has kept promises on the congestion charge. He took a robust line with Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police's fatally weakened Commissioner.

Yet — aside perhaps from the "Boris bikes" — he has not yet completed any single project to define his mayoralty in the way that Mr Livingstone created the congestion charge. And while his cavalier style endears him to some, a perceived lack of accountability irritates others.

The coming cuts will be Mr Johnson's first serious test. Mr Livingstone, or his rival Oona King, is sure to pursue the Mayor relentlessly on cuts. How he responds, and whether he sets out a real vision for London beyond the banner year of 2012, will determine whether Londoners — and this newspaper — support him for a second term.

The future of prison

The attack by former Conservative leader LordHoward on Justice Secretary Ken Clarke over prisons dramatises a thorny issue. As home secretary in the mid-1990s, Michael Howard famously declared that "prison works" and gave his blessing to a steady increase in the prison population that continued under Labour. Now Mr Clarke has declared that having 85,000 people in prison is neither affordable nor desirable, and signalled that he will encourage greater use of community sentences. This strikingly liberal view is anathema to many Tories.

The Tories' hand may be forced in any case by budget cuts. Nevertheless, Mr Clarke would be foolhardy to ignore the role of prison in reducing crime. Prison keeps offenders off the streets. HM Chief Inspector of Probation, Andrew Bridges, recently calculated it costs £2 million for prisons to prevent each serious crime. It is easy to talk abstractly now about the cost-benefits of prison and whether or not we can afford them, quite another for ministers to do so in the wake of a murder by a prisoner out in the community on licence. Mr Clarke might do better to try to cut the extraordinary costs of prison — an annual average of £41,000 per inmate — than slash the numbers inside.

Burning books

The decision by US pastor Terry Jones to hold off on plans to burn the Koran tomorrow is a small victory for common sense. The plan was as unnecessary as it was offensive. Better yet, could we not simply ignore extremists like this in future? In the spirit of Eid, which starts tonight, let's celebrate the positive side of faith and shrug off the nutters.