The campaign to become Birmingham’s first elected mayor has hardly set the city alight yet, but I hear that the odds on a victory for the only serious candidate to declare his intention to stand are shortening almost by the week.

Sion Simon, the former Erdington Labour MP, is up and running with an impressive team behind him.

Not that you will find Mr Simon shouting about this from the rooftops, at least not yet. He has only given one major interview since putting himself forward for the job, in which he told me that he wanted to end Birmingham’s unsavoury reputation for political backbiting.

But Mr Simon has not been standing idly by while waiting for the May 2012 referendum that will decide whether there is to be a mayoral election.

He’s been holding a series of meet-Sion soirees, where Labour supporters, those with no political affiliation, and local business leaders get the chance to have a drink with the would-be mayor and find out where he stands on the major issues of the day.

One of those get-togethers was held in the city centre earlier this week, with Mr Simon surprising those present by likening himself to Chicago’s first Mayor Daley, a man who was so far on the right of the Democratic Party that many people doubted whether he could be described as a Democrat at all.

No doubt Mr Simon intends to make himself attractive to Birmingham’s white working class voters, who might feel there is little in the modern Labour Party to appeal to them, as well as pitching for the same demographic among disgruntled Conservative supporters.

Those familiar with his campaign say that he possesses a green folder labelled The First 100 Days, setting out policy pledges upon taking office. Very Kennedyesque.

He is said to have set up focus groups to advise him on important issues for Birmingham, and also has the support of public relations experts who are giving him advice free of charge, presumably in the hope that they will be rewarded when Mr Simon becomes mayor.

MP’s trade union leaders and constituency Labour parties are being lined up to support him. All in all, his bandwagon is beginning to roll and you have to imagine it will become increasingly difficult to stop Sion Simon from getting the Labour mayoral nomination.

Only now is it really beginning to emerge how differently Birmingham will be governed when the city gets a mayor.

The Government’s attempts to beef up administrative arrangements mean that the mayor will be able to appoint cabinet members who are not city councillors. Successful business people, say, or representatives from the voluntary sector.

I was talking the other day to a former very senior Birmingham Labour councillor who said he had been discussing this very matter with Sion Simon.