David Cameron has to make sense of an unclear mandate

The moral of the story is that nobody knows anything. On the eve of Britain's general election these certainties ruled: there will be a hung parliament; a governing party cannot increase its vote share; ground campaigns are a Labour specialism; the UK Independence party is a Tory problem; disillusioned Liberal Democrats will turn to Ed Miliband; and the Labour leader cannot be worse than Gordon Brown, his predecessor. There is nothing to salvage from the detritus of overconfidence and groupthink.

If conservatism could be distilled into a slogan, it would be no more rousing than "I do not know". Good Tories stand for epistemic humility and not much else. They believe humans have little knowledge of complex systems - markets, families, nature - and so should stay their hand. As if to prove this point the electorate, which is as complex as any system, stumped us by giving Mr Cameron a decisive win.

And now for another mystery: what did they mean by that? If the election result was a mandate for the Conservative manifesto, the prime minister can govern boldly. "People are not using the term 'landslide'," says a magnanimous Labour insider, "but in the circumstances, that is what it was." If, however, the nation was voting grudgingly for continuity and the least of all evils, Mr Cameron must curb his enthusiasm.

As he and his advisers reconvene in Downing Street, even they are unsure. They know well enough that Britain has not become Texas overnight. "The danger is over-reach," says one. At the same time, voters have furnished them with a parliamentary majority for cuts to the state in general and welfare in particular. Mr Cameron's cabinet reshuffle, which gave Sajid Javid the business portfolio and John Whittingdale his old culture brief, must have Margaret Thatcher smiling from the beyond.

The majority, the right's presence in government (and on the vigilant backbenches), Mr Cameron's freedom from any worries about re-election, the sheer disarray of the opposition: the conditions are now in place for the kind of reforms she never got around to. The laws on planning and land use can be loosened up, if rural Tories are pacified. Free schools and academies will proliferate. Power will flow to cities - George Osborne, chancellor of the exchequer, is a convert to a cause that Greg Clark, the new local government secretary, has proselytised for a decade.

And then there is the BBC, whose charter comes up for renewal in 2017. For some years the Conservatives have contemplated a less expansive and differently funded national broadcaster. Relations between the corporation and the party are sour; the Tories still seethe at the perceived slant against them in campaign coverage. Those relations are about to get worse.

On top of all these structural reforms, Mr Cameron must see off the fiscal deficit and revise the terms of Britain's membership of the EU: the two projects whose success or failure will decide his reputation for the ages. It adds up to a breakneck government, a two-year dash to a more Tory Britain before ministers succumb to the inertia and unpopularity of midterm.

The conundrum is how much the public will bear. It is hard to recall an election result whose mandate was so opaque. The numbers say one thing, a subjective reading of the national mood says another. True, stringent manifesto and fiscal plans have earned more votes than Tony Blair managed in 2001 or 2005. But Britain, or at least England, does not feel like a country asking to be turned upside down by zealots. It is not leftwing or rightwing; it is just anti-Utopian.

In the days that follow an election, excitable prognostications are made. After 1992, Labour would "never win again". They did, thrice. After 1997, the Conservatives were looking at a "generation" in opposition. Thirteen years is not a generation. It is the arrogance of certainty and it is here again. There is loose talk of a new Tory imperium, with revised constituency boundaries and a divided opposition making the incumbents a shoo-in for 2020. Much of this talk comes from the Labour side, and it is not gallows humour.

It is not necessarily wrong, but it is premature - and typical of the predictive overconfidence that took such a fall on Thursday. If Mr Cameron rules moderately, with a reformist edge, his party might indeed take out a long-term lease on power. If he tries to do Thatcher's unfinished business, he could saddle his party with a foul reputation by 2020. If the "might" and the "could" sound mealy-mouthed, that is only prudent. We know what Britons said last week, but not what they meant.

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