The four words that will be springing from ministerial lips today will be: “These were midterm elections.” They will be conveyed in a variety of styles: Tony Blair will probably issue them in his best “Aw, shucks” manner, John Reid will deliver them in a faintly menacing fashion, and Hazel Blears, the Labour Party chairman, will, on past form, spray them out at 100mph.

The appropriate response in every instance will be another set of four words, namely: “Oh, come off it.”

There are five reasons why these are definitely not “business-as-midterm-usual” results, essentially the same as those of the 1980s and the 1990s.

The first is the context of the contest. This is the first important set of elections in British history to be held immediately before what is, in effect, a preannounced prime ministerial resignation. In theory, this should have helped Labour by defusing voter anger. What is the point, after all, in using these ballots to give the Government a kicking when, to all intents and purposes, there will be a new administration by the beginning of July? It is like turning up to watch the execution of a corpse. Yet even though Mr Blair has made it clear that he is four fifths out of the door, many voters wanted to shove the rest of him through it. This is quite extraordinary.

The second is that the definition of midterm seems to have been extended so that it means any period longer than ten minutes since the last general election. Labour’s electoral record since 2003 has been appalling. In May that year the expected “Baghdad bounce”, a boost for Mr Blair’s party as Iraq was liberated at smashing speed, turned into a “Saddam slump”. In 2004, Labour managed a diabolical 26 per cent of the vote nationally and was thumped again at the European elections. In 2005, it got a third majority in the Commons, but with the lowest winning percentage of the vote ever recorded. Last year, not really the “middle” of a parliamentary term, it slumped back to 26 per cent again. If the party were a football team it would be changing its manager annually.

The third is the Scotland element. Irrespective of the outcome of what may be a close race followed by weeks of bargaining, it is staggering that Labour was ever in such trouble north of the Border. At the last Scottish Parliament elections (also held in a midterm year), it won twice as many seats as the Nationalists. The idea that this lead could be wiped out is surreal. The prospect of Labour losing Scotland is on the scale of Lord North’s loss of the American colonies.

The fourth element is that the official percentages of the votes that the BBC and Sky calculate by this afternoon are likely to overstate Labour and understate the Conservatives. This is partly because the Tories will do miserably in Scotland and not very impressively in Wales. Neither of these cast ballots last year. In a swath of southern England, furthermore, the Tories will be hit in the calculation of the national vote because so many of their candidates were unopposed and hence no votes were cast for them.

For these reasons it is conceivable that the Tory share of the vote will not rise much (or even fall) compared with 2006, a statistic that Cabinet members will seize on. The numbers will not reflect the actual damage.

Finally, there is Labour’s organisational decline. In large parts of the country it was too weak to find people to wear its rosettes. To fail to compete in an estimated 40 per cent of all English seats is abysmal. Ministers would do better not to witter on about “these were midterm elections” and instead spend their time recruiting some new party members.

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