A number of political careers appear to have been damaged by the attempt to create a mayor for Birmingham, which was rejected overwhelmingly by voters in a referendum earlier this month.

Sion Simon quit his career in the House of Commons in order first to campaign for the creation of a mayor and secondly to campaign to win the job for himself.

His Erdington seat, which he vacated to make way for current MP Jack Dromey, is a Tory target and Mr Dromey faces a real fight to hold on to it if boundary changes proposed by the Electoral Commission go through.

But there’s little doubt that Mr Simon would still be the MP today, with a secure future at least until 2015, if he had chosen to stay on.

Instead, he took a gamble which might have paid off handsomely. Mr Simon could have gone down in the history as Birmingham’s first directly-elected mayor and the man who kicked off a new era of local government.

As it stands, he is considering his future. There’s no reason his career in politics should be over, but it’s hard to see where it goes from here, unless he can convince the Labour party to find him another seat in the Commons.

Rival potential candidate Liam Byrne remained the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Hodge Hill and kept his seat in the Shadow Cabinet.

If the city had voted to create a mayor then Mr Byrne would have left the Labour front bench. But as that didn’t happen there was no reason he couldn’t simply return to the fold, greeted by colleagues delighted to have him back.