In the world of business it is often said that fortune favours the brave but in politics history regularly tells us that it pays to play the percentages.

While the world’s most successful entrepreneurs can look back at the that moment where they risked everything and came up smelling of roses, the political landscape is littered with the embers of careers that went up in flames following a miscalculated gamble.

It is only a few months since high-flying James Purnell decided the time was right to try and unseat the Prime Minister only to see his backers melt into the distance along with his credibility and probably his career. Geoff Hoon and Pat Hewitt have since joined him in this no man’s land of political purgatory.

These previous follies – and innumerable others – were evidently of little concern to Sion Simon this week after he resigned his post as Culture Minister and announced he was stepping down from his eminently winnable Erdington seat at the General Election to concentrate on winning Labour’s nomination to become the city’s first elected mayor.

The first assumption must be that Mr Simon knows something that we don’t or he is absolutely convinced that the Conservative Party is a shoe- in come May 6.

Presently it is just the Tories who have committed to forcing Birmingham to hold a referendum in a new Parliament on whether the city should be run by an elected mayor and while Labour is known to support elected mayors, it has certainly made no such commitment – well not in public anyway.

Clearly an elected mayor in Birmingham would be attractive to the Labour Party as it would seem the only way it will ever oust the current Con/Lib regime but it is far more likely to happen under a new Cameron government. The trouble for Mr Simon – and the growing number of other hopefuls who undoubtedly have half an eye on the role – is that it is looking increasingly unlikely that the Tories will win the overall majority that looked so certain just a few short months ago.

If they do, however, and the city decides that it wants an elected mayor to take control then Mr Simon has to win the Labour nomination and then win the election itself if he is to fulfil his aspirations of imparting radical reform in the second city – and one would imagine that he is an outside bet at best on each count.

As a Birmingham MP, Mr Simon has enjoyed a relatively unblemished record and anybody who is thought highly enough to be elevated to a ministerial role should not be discounted – but being forced to pay back £21,000 in expenses for renting a flat from his sister will not help his cause and I would imagine he will be avoiding any YouTube spoofs for the foreseeable future. The trouble for Mr Simon could be that, regardless of what is being discussed behind the scenes, there could be some much bigger hitters who covet that Labour nomination and they may be hard to ignore when it comes to the crunch.

The real issue is that Labour, whoever their nomination may be, is a long way from a guaranteed victory in any mayoral election and the more it thinks it is, the less likely a victory becomes – remember Hartlepool?

The Tories already reportedly have a high-profile candidate up their sleeve and there are a host of possible independents from Carl Chinn to Digby Jones who could easily upset the apple cart. Out of leftfield a public figure like Clare Short or a strong candidate from the city’s Asian community could also make a significant impact in any election.

You have to admire Mr Simon’s ‘who dares wins’ attitude – but don’t go too far away with that fire extinguisher.