It's 7am and the eighth floor of London’s City Hall, Lord Foster’s bulbous building which Boris Johnson has dubbed “the Onion”, is already buzzing with fresh coffee and new ideas.

The mayor is yet to arrive but “Team Boris”, his coterie of advisers, is at work. Inner walls and doorways guarded by “gate-keepers” to Ken Livingstone, ousted after eight years in power, have been stripped away like layers of an onion to give a more open feel.

Even the canteen, once a no-go area for Conservatives, is Boris-friendly, its staff warmed by a walkabout in which he shook everybody’s hand.

Team Boris is part think tank, part ideas factory for the new regime, and part Praetorian Guard staffed by David Cameron loyalists to ensure that no Johnson gaffe derails the Tories’ advance on Downing Street.

The telephone lines and e-mails chatter constantly between City Hall and Conservative central headquarters three miles away by road. Johnson wants to encourage his staff to move by Thames ferry between the two, but for now there is no time to leave their desks.

Many will be at work until 10pm. The earnestness matches the first bloom of new Labour in the mid1990s when the coterie around Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were hungry for power and overflowing with ideas.

There is much to be done. At the start of the week Johnson announced a ban on drinking alcohol on public transport; on Friday he held a meeting with Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York.

A capital-wide investigation into hundreds of projects funded by the London Development Agency, a quango, is to be led by Patience Wheatcroft, the former financial journalist.

A glamorous young Muslim woman is the latest Cameron favourite to be parachuted in to keep a close eye on Johnson.

Munira Mirza, who argues that racism in the UK is greatly exaggerated, is to serve as a cultural adviser to the mayor.

She is the third member of his new team to have worked for Policy Exchange, the organisation behind many of the policies adopted by Cameron’s Conservatives.

Mirza’s appointment will also be viewed as an attempt to neutralise any accusations that Johnson is racist, especially as he seeks to slash grants to fringe ethnic groups, many of which received lavish funding from Livingstone.

Mirza believes race relations policies based on multicultural ideas have been divisive. While the official party line remains that Johnson is his own man, the Tory high command is leaving nothing to chance.

Many Conservatives still privately fear that poor management of London, or simply a spate of trademark Johnson blunders, could scupper the party’s prospects at the next general election.

“Make no mistake, Boris is mayor,” said one Tory source at City Hall. “But these people are certainly running the policy – and that’s what you’d expect. Boris has never been Mr Details.

“These are some of the brightest people from Tory HQ . . . there to develop and showcase our ideas.”

Onlookers have been struck by the pace and energy of the new leadership, as they look to establish a “blue revolution” across London in Johnson’s first 100 days.

Nick Boles, the founder of Policy Exchange, who surrendered his own ambitions of seeking the Tory nomination for mayor to undergo successful cancer treatment, is now acting chief of staff on Team Boris.

Boles, a leading light in Cameron’s “Notting Hill” set of bright young Tories, is tipped for a cabinet role in the next Conservative government. He was applauded when he announced he was gay during the selection meeting when he was being chosen to fight Margaret Thatcher’s old seat at Grantham. This is as much a testing ground for him as it is for Johnson and any future Tory government.

Nearby sits the suave Dan Ritterband, 32, a former Saatchi & Saatchi advertising executive and one-time director of Policy Exchange, who is likely to focus on marketing the new mayor.

Francis Maude, the former Tory chairman who is widely thought of as the godfather of the Notting Hill set, is also playing a guiding role in developments at City Hall. His former chief of staff, James McGrath, is ensconced as Johnson’s political adviser. Two other members of the team have worked for Maude: Ben Gascoigne, a special adviser, and Sara Cadisch, an events organiser.

“Boles’s guys are called the transition team, but frankly there’s no fixed idea about how long the transition will last,” said one official at Tory headquarters. “It could be until the general election – it’s as long as it takes.”

At least two ideas mooted by Johnson during his campaign have been squashed by his rigorous new policymen. A proposed amnesty for illegal immigrants who are “established” in London has been quietly dropped.

Johnson also talked of axing various “embassies” City Hall has sprouted in China, India and Brussels. Some may be closed, but most will simply be incorporated into existing UK government offices in foreign cities.

The key policy announcements expected in the next week will concern crime, with a plan to bolster the number of police officers on the City’s streets.

The Olympic Board will meet on Thursday, when Johnson will announce his new adviser to work on the 2012 Games.

Although Johnson denounced the “cronyism” of Livingstone’s regime during the election campaign, the new mayor has left himself open to accusations of similar favouritism.

On Friday he unveiled the former BBC political correspondent Guto Harri, a friend since Oxford, as his chief spin doctor. Wheatcroft is a former colleague from the Telegraph group of newspapers, Johnson’s old workplace.

Things can still go wrong. Johnson arrived characteristically late for two official functions last week.

Eyebrows were raised when he was spotted quaffing champagne at a birthday party for the Spectator magazine on his third day in the job.

It may go unreported in The Londoner, a freesheet Johnson dismissed as “propaganda” and pledged to scrap during his campaign. Its 10-strong staff are expecting the chop as part of an impending efficiency drive.

Other publications have found a new lease of life, A stall serving City Hall staff has sold dozens of copies of a 2006 work called Calm Down, Boris, a children’s picture book about a creature with unruly hair who irritates his friends with his overaffectionate kissing.

“Boris is a very lovable monster if only he didn’t get so carried away,” says the book’s cover.

Skyline review

Boris Johnson is planning to topple Ken Livingstone’s schemes for skyscrapers in London.

Johnson’s team are determined to preserve the capital’s skyline, but privately fear that hopes of blocking some projects could descend into a legal quagmire, with developers and architects seeking compensation.

The new mayor has appointed Sir Simon Milton to lead a review of all high-rises planned for the capital. The Westminster councillor became a strident critic of Livingstone’s plans.

Milton said earlier this year: “[Livingstone] has made it very clear that he and his people want more tall buildings.

“This fetish for tall buildings anywhere and everywhere will be a disaster for London.”

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