None of the polls predicted that the Conservatives (also known as the Tories) would win an overall majority in the general election on May 7. The only nearly correct prediction was that the Scottish National Party (SNP) would do outstandingly well in Scotland.

Many feared that the general disillusionment with politicians would result in a low turnout. In fact it was 1 percent up on the 2010 election, although a turnout of 66.15 is hardly anything to be proud of in a long-established parliamentary democracy.

Britain's system of single-member constituencies elected on a "first past the post" basis has the backing of the two main parties (Conservative and Labour), but it often leads to a party gaining more seats than its overall share of the vote would justify.

In this election the Tories won 331 seats out of 650 and 36.95 percent of votes cast. Labour won 232 seats and 30.4 percent. The SNP won 56 out of the 59 parliamentary seats in Scotland with 4.7 percent of the overall votes cast, practically wiping out the Labour Party in Scotland, which had been a Labour stronghold.

Nearly 30 percent of votes went to smaller parties but led to results that "short changed" their supporters. The UK Independence Party (UKIP) received 12.6 percent of the votes cast, or nearly three times more than the SNP, but won only one seat. It and the Green Party, which received 4 percent of the vote but also only one seat, are pressing the case for some form of proportional representation, such as they have in the European Parliament.

The Liberal Democrats' share of the vote crumbled to 7.8 percent and they were left with only eight seats, compared with 57 in the 2010 election. They too would benefit from proportional representation.

This result is a sad outcome for a party that in 2010 decided that in order to ensure stable government it should compromise and enter a coalition with the Conservatives. By so doing it ensured that the Tories' right wing was kept in check and pushed a number of liberal policies, but it reneged on a promise to oppose a hike in university fees and was squeezed from both the right and left.

The Lib Dem's leader, former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, has resigned, and once again observers are questioning what future there is for a middle-of-the-road party.

Why did the Tories win and Labour lose? The reasons are manifold, but Labour primarily lost because it had the wrong leader and unconvincing policies.

Labour leader Ed Miliband, who has resigned, was sincere but overconfident and misguided. He failed to present himself as a potential prime minister and came across as gauche and gimmicky. The policies that he emphasized seemed designed to appeal to his hard-core supporters rather than the middle class and aspirational working people.

The Labour Party must now choose a new leader whose appeal extends beyond the party's traditional supporters and who can enunciate policies that can win the backing of the middle ground.

The Tories made great play of the piece of paper left by the Labour Party's treasury minister as a joke to his successor. This said that there was no money left in the treasury and enabled the Tories to depict Labour as fiscally irresponsible.

There were undoubted failures in the economic policies of the Labour administrations of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, not least in giving, with Tory support, too much freedom to the banks and not keeping sufficient control on public spending, but to blame them for causing the financial crisis of 2008 may be good politics but unjust.

The Tories won the election not because they are loved, which they are not by most of the electorate, but because over the last five years the British economy, particularly in comparison with that of many other European countries, has done reasonably well. Unemployment and inflation are down and living standards are more or less back to pre-crisis levels.

How much of this is due to the economic and financial management of the coalition government and how much to luck and other factors is debatable. But when the electorate considered which way to vote, they decided by a small majority not to take risks by voting for an unproven leader advocating left-wing populist policies.

The Tory majority is slim and the challenges great. The most pressing is how to deal with Scotland and the constitutional changes that must be tackled in devolving, as promised by all parties at Westminster, more power to the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh. The issues include not only devolving powers to Wales and Northern Ireland but also to England. Should there, for instance, be an English parliament or regional assemblies? The SNP is not currently pressing for a new referendum, but independence for Scotland is not off the agenda.

An equally important issue is that of Britain's relations with the European Union. Cameron's commitment to an "in or out" referendum on Britain and the EU by 2017 was made to satisfy right-wing Euroskeptics in the Tory party and for fear of losing votes to UKIP. He now has to persuade other European countries to make sufficient concessions to enable him to recommend a "yes" vote in a referendum.

Cameron understands that a "no" vote would be very damaging for British interests. But like Prime Minister John Major in the 1990s he will not have an easy time dealing with the "little Englander" right of the Conservative Party.

"Brexit" (British exit from the EU) and the breakup of the United Kingdom by Scotland becoming an independent state will not, I sincerely hope, happen in my lifetime, but they can't be ruled out as impossible.

The most disheartening aspect of this election has been the almost total lack of discussion of foreign affairs or defense at a time when world peace is threatened not only by revanchist Russia, but also turmoil in the Middle East and Islamic terrorism, to say nothing of threats elsewhere.

Britain sometimes seems to be suffering from a fit of isolationism following its traumatic involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and more recently Libya.

Hugh Cortazzi served as Britain's ambassador to Japan from 1980 to 1984.