London, May 2: Boris Johnson is preparing to be unveiled as the new mayor of London following Labour’s collapse across Britain in the local elections.

Senior Conservative sources said they would be “gobsmacked” if Johnson did not win the mayoral contest and even Downing Street aides appear to have conceded that Ken Livingstone has lost. Confidence of a Tory win was boosted after one bookmaker announced it was paying out on a Boris Johnson victory hours before the official result is announced. Paddy Power said the “mauling” Labour had received elsewhere in England and Wales suggested the Conservative candidate was on his way to City Hall.

Winning the London mayoral contest is expected to cap an historic electoral win for the Conservatives with David Cameron’s party on course for more than 44 per cent of the national vote. Labour is now expected to finish with as little as 24 per cent, humiliatingly pushed into third place by the Liberal Democrats on 25 per cent.

Voter turnout in the mayoral poll is believed to have been at least 45 per cent, which is around 10 percentage points higher than the turnouts in the 2004 and 2000 elections.

In the run-up to the poll, Johnson enjoyed a narrow opinion poll lead. “These are elections being fought against a difficult economic backdrop,” said Ed Miliband, the cabinet office minister and a key Brown aide.