The outcome of the 2015 General Election has proved such a surprise to so many people that you would think the Conservatives had won by a landslide.

Memories are short. In 2010 in the UK we had a coalition. Well, it was actually just an alliance between two parties that had failed to obtain a working majority, but ‘coalition’ sounds more noble, as if the government had been drawn from across the whole political spectrum in the national interest.

The polls predicted another one this time. It didn’t happen, and instead we got a government with a working majority. But it’s a small majority. In the past, small majorities were associated with weakness and precarious votes in the Commons, as Harold Wilson knew well. Cameron’s majority this time isn’t even as big as Major’s in 1992.

Nothing to see here. The only ‘remarkable’ thing about the 2015 election is that the result was not predicted, and that in turn is related to polls and political statistics being an easy peg on which to hang a news story. Once the excitement passes – evident already – it will be time to engage with the realities of working with a small majority in an era far removed from the two-party times of the last century.