On August 24 in the National Stadium in Beijing the world will watch as, at the climax of the closing ceremony, the city’s mayor will surrender the Olympic flag. Unless there is a sudden dramatic reversal of fortunes, the person the world will watch receiving that flag will have a blond mop.

Boris Johnson is on course to win the London mayoral election and run the capital in the four years of preparation before it hosts the next Games. Ken Livingstone, who lays claim to a share of the credit in helping London to secure the 2012 Olympics, looks likely to be among those watching and wondering how he lost.

The race is far from over but in Downing Street there is a weary anticipation that the incumbent will lose. “We know all the press cares about is London,” a close ally of Gordon Brown said last week of the local and mayoral elections on May 1. “And we know either we are going to lose or, at best, it is going to be very tight.”

Some will claim that Mr Brown’s allies are seeking to depress expectations and rally opposition to the Tory candidate in talking up the threat to Mr Livingstone. One person helping Mr Livingstone said that he was philosophical about the intervention. “I would play the same expectations game they are if the boot were on the other foot.”

The Mayor’s supporters acknowledge that the mood has shifted this week. Inside the campaign there is talk of frustration at the media coverage and shock at a poll last week putting Mr Livingstone 12 points behind, a margin that they insist is exaggerated. Asked whether Mr Livingstone will win, even his closest supporters hesitate to say “yes”. “He could still pull it off,” offered one loyalist after a significant pause.

Nor is there an expectation of help from No 10. While those close to the London Mayor insist that Mr Brown understands the consequences for his own premiership if Labour loses London, nobody pretends that there is a personal bond between the pair. In Downing Street attention is focused on planning for the period after what is expected to be a miserable night for Labour.

Already there is tension over the direction of the Livingstone campaign. Some parliamentary allies are suggesting that the campaign needs to be refocused, with the Mayor appearing with more senior government figures. Yet Mr Livingstone’s three-way campaign organisation rejects this option because this plays into Tory messages about the need for a change.

“This is a more complex campaign than we have ever had before,” said one person working on the strategy, not least because of the disastrous backdrop to the campaign. First, Rosemary Emodi, a race adviser, resigned after lying about a free luxury weekend in Africa. She was followed by her boss, Lee Jasper, a close friend of Mr Livingstone, who came under heavy fire for his conduct.

Unfortunately for Team Livingstone, Mr Jasper appears to have personified the toxic charge that his citadel has been overrun by a pervading sense of entitlement and arrogance.

Steve Norris, the man whom Mr Livingstone beat twice, says his former opponent is a curiously reduced figure. “He is not the Ken of four years ago, that’s for sure. He has shown hardly any of the old fire.” Mr Norris, an adviser to the Johnson campaign, said: “Boris has been shrewd. He has not allowed himself to get into great debates over detail with Livingstone. Like a good boxer, he has danced around the ring.”

So far, Mr Johnson’s policy pronouncements have erred towards the minimalist but campaign chiefs say that from next week there will be a “policy or announcement every day until polling day”. Next week will also be the first time that Mr Johnson is joined by David Cameron on the stump, a sure sign, supporters say, that the wind is at the Tories’ back.

Mr Cameron’s attitude to his fellow Old Etonian and Bullingdon Club contemporary was ambivalent until recently. Mr Cameron was a favoured son of Michael Howard when Mr Johnson was cast out. As his political career nose-dived under Mr Howard – a humiliating tour of apology to Liverpool followed by a dismissal from the front bench for falsely denying an adulterous relationship – so that of Mr Cameron bloomed.

There are those around Mr Cameron who continue to fret about what havoc a Johnson mayoralty might cause the Tory leader’s cautiously calibrated political positioning. Indeed, some senior Labour figures console themselves that Mr Johnson “would be a disaster” for Mr Cameron.

Relations between Mr Cameron and the Johnson campaign are currently good. There is irritation, however, at the suggestion that the Tory leadership is already seeking to influence how Mr Johnson would run London. A member of the Shadow Cabinet briefed the Financial Times last week that the MP for Henley would need “very good people” around him. The implied lack of confidence in Mr Johnson as well as the hubris of the remark enraged the candidate.

The Times has learnt, however, that there is a “transition team”, chaired by Mr Johnson, drawing up a “first 30 days” strategy to seize control at City Hall. Some of those around Mr Johnson fear that if he wins he faces huge institutional reluctance from the staff at City Hall, which has known only one mayor.

For now, Mr Johnson and his team are loath to talk in public about “implementation plans” for fear of allowing Mr Livingstone to claim that he is taking Londoners’ votes for granted. “The media is getting carried away as usual. We could still lose this,” grumbled one Johnson supporter yesterday.

One person as surprised as anyone at the turn of events is Mr Johnson himself, if one account of a recent meeting with the Olympic Delivery Authority is to be believed. On being told that, on being elected, he would be expected to attend the closing ceremony and receive the flag for London, Mr Johnson is said to have worriedly consulted his diary before complaining: “But I’m in Tuscany that week!”

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