There are few occasions when it is possible to point to a turn of events and state with confidence that the political landscape will change dramatically as a direct result.

The Government’s decision to abandon plans to impose shadow mayors on Birmingham and 10 other cities is just such a moment.

This means that Mike Whitby, the Tory leader of Birmingham City Council for the past seven years, will not become mayor when the Localism Bill passes into law later this year, will not pass go, will not collect a hefty salary and will not be guaranteed an extra 18 months in office until a mayoral election can be held in May 2013.

Barring an unexpected and improbable boost to the coalition Government’s popularity, it seems certain that Labour will gain an overall majority in the Birmingham council chamber at next May’s local elections, catapulting 65-year-old Sir Albert Bore back into power for the first time since June 2004.

As far as the Labour Party is concerned, the Government U-turn on shadow mayors will make life far more interesting, and quite possibly dangerously divisive.

City councillors had been gearing themselves up for a rather boring and pointless campaign aimed at convincing Whitby to do the honourable thing and resign as shadow mayor if Labour regained control of the council next May.

That campaign is now unnecessary and will be ditched to be replaced, one suspects, by the beginning of a war of attrition between Labour’s two declared candidates for Mayor of Birmingham – Sir Albert Bore and Sion Simon.

For Sir Albert, the way things have panned out could hardly be better. He’s recently seen off another challenge to his leadership of the Labour group and is no doubt preparing ambitious policy plans to hit the road running when he takes over as council leader next May.

His prospective triumphant return to high office must place him in a very good position to beat Mr Simon in Labour’s selection battle to become the party’s mayoral candidate, assuming of course that Birmingham votes in favour of having a mayor in the 2012 referendum.

Mr Simon issued a statement, helpfully drawing attention to Sir Albert’s “45-year career, including more than 30 as a Birmingham city councillor”, which went on to bracket Sir Albert in the same camp as Tory “elder statesman” Sir Bernard Zissman.

No coded messages about old man Albert verses young Mr Simon there, then.

The statement also predicted, presumably with a straight face, that the selection tussle between Sir Albert and Mr Simon would be fought in a “comradely fashion”.

Oh yes, I expect comradely warmth between Bore and Simon in the way that Stalin and Trotsky were comrades. Let’s just hope that someone doesn’t end up with an ice-pick embedded in the back of their skull.

Mike Whitby knows now that his days at the top of the tree are numbered. Ten months and counting to next year’s elections where, given the way the seats to be contested fall, Birmingham’s Tory-Lib Dem coalition will be history about five hours after the polling stations close.