David Cameron speaking outside 10, Downing Street after his stunning electoral victory last week... but with a wafer-thin majority he will govern with a profound sense of his own political mortality. Photo: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

The results of the British general election have seen the country step back from an electoral cliff edge of a hung parliament, electoral deals, coalitions, and possibly another election within six months. A sensational late swing to the Conservative party (the Tories) has given David Cameron a stunning victory. The first Conservative government in 23 years.

The Tories have taken 331 seats (giving them a narrow working majority of about a dozen or so seats). Labour’s Ed Miliband limped in with a hundred seats fewer. The Liberal Democrats, formerly part of the coalition government, have imploded with only eight seats out of its previous 57. The Scottish National Party (SNP) enjoyed a sensational surge from six seats five years ago to 56 today. The anti-EU insurgent Ukip party obtained only one seat, despite being the third largest in the overall number of votes.

In choosing the Conservatives, voters in the UK have opted for fiscal prudence over profligacy. They decided that Ed Miliband and his Labour Party did not have the answers for Britain.

The Tories’ economic record and the electorate’s fear of change weighed heavily on voters’ minds. They decided that a Labour government supported by a rampant SNP, which wants the end of the Union, would be unsustainable and unacceptable. The challenge for Labour now is to learn from defeat and move back to the centre ground.

Three political leaders – Miliband, Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats and Nigel Farage of Ukip – have fallen on their swords. Not since the end of World War I, when monarchs across Europe abdicated or were toppled, have so many political heads rolled at one time.

This election has been one of the most pivotal for Britain of recent years. The stakes were high. Britain could be stumbling towards irrevocable change, which could leave it much diminished.

Although the United Kingdom now has a majority government in place, history shows that governing with such a small majority can be fraught. The rabid Eurosceptic right in the Tory party will make Cameron’s job very difficult. But Britain has been here before. In 1992 John Major ran a government with a broadly similar majority which by 1996/1997 was being held to ransom by its own right-wing (“the bastards,” in John Major’s exasperated words).

A government with the wafer-thin majority of Cameron’s demands a considerable degree of maturity on the part of its MPs. They need to set aside needless partisanship and to work for the good of the country, rather than their own short-term gain or partisan antipathy towards the EU. Prime Minister Cameron will govern nervously and with a profound sense of his own political mortality.

However, there is plenty of evidence that minority governments or those with only a small majority can be successful. Ask politicians in New Zealand or Canada, both countries with Westminster parliamentary models like ours. Or look at continental Europe, where most countries have perennial coalitions and small majorities, albeit with different electoral systems.

How Cameron handles the extreme Right in his party will be crucial

There are two key issues that are at stake for Britain. First of all, the elections may mark the point of no return for the troubled 300-year-old Union between England and Scotland, thanks to the dominant surge in support the electorate gave to the secessionist SNP. Secondly, the Tories have promised to renegotiate Britain’s relations with the EU and put the result to an in/out referendum by the end of 2017.

On the first, the elephant in the room – as it has been throughout the election – is the SNP under the leadership of a perkily attractive new leader, Nicola Sturgeon. Eight months ago, the referendum on Scottish independence was decisively won by those who preferred to maintain the Union with England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

However, this general election has resulted in a landslide victory for the SNP, a Scottish insurgency dedicated to dismembering Britain. A virtual clean sweep of all seats in Scotland has wiped out Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats north of the Tweed.

This is the single most important point to understand about these British elections. Labour’s collapse north of the border has made it unelectable in 2015 and, unless it recovers its Scottish base, could make it unelectable in Britain ever.

The union is in a desperately poor shape and, although the SNP is mainly focused on next year’s Scottish parliamentary elections, these are dominated by whether to promise a second independence referendum in its manifesto. With 56 SNP members of the House of Commons, a party that wants a break-up of the country will be passing laws in major areas of government by MPs whose constituents will not be affected by them, influencing policies in a country they do not want to be part of, and in whose outcomes they have no interest.

Much now depends on how Cameron decides to use his slim majority to govern. All the signs are that the key lesson of the campaign may have already been taken on board. The Tories had not been inclusive enough in its policies. It must now re-examine its core message and reach out to more working class and ethnic voters. He has already made a bold pitch for the political centre of British politics with a return to the cry of “One-Nation” politics first embraced by Conservatives before Thatcherite ideology broke the mould.

The first test will lie in how he presents the Queen’s Speech, the government’s legislative programme, to Parliament. He should seek to offer the best of all that the parties have put forward in this election.

A federal United Kingdom with greater devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as, importantly, the English regions and major cities, and English votes for English laws. A rethinking of welfare cuts. New council tax bands for those who are better off to raise extra funds for local services. Reform of non-dom status to fund lower income taxes for the poor. A pledge to revisit House of Lords reform. A massive house-building programme. A continued drive to cut Britain’s debt. A fairer voting system.

On the second major issue, the Tories’ Europhobia – even with UKIP now thankfully a spent force – could do grave damage. With only a tiny majority, how Cameron handles the extreme Right in his party will be crucial. A British exit from the EU would be a catastrophe both for Britain and Europe, economically and strategically.

Conscious of the looming challenge, Bertelsmann Stiftung – a leading German social foundation – has calculated what the economic consequences of Britain leaving the EU would be. They would be significant for all EU countries. But Malta would be among the worst-hit countries if this happened, with a real decrease in Malta’s GDP per capita by 2030 of .45 per cent or €39 million annually because of the strong economic links between Malta and the UK in the financial sector.

Britain has rarely been in such a constitutionally unstable state. If England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland retain any ambition to count for something in the world internationally – economically, culturally, commercially, militarily and in security terms – the United Kingdom must come through the next Parliament intact, and with a new commitment to the EU.