GREECE’S CENTRE-RIGHT New Democracy party (ND) comfortably won a snap general election on July 7th, capturing 39.9% of the vote to 31.5% for the left-wing Syriza party of Alexis Tsipras, the current prime minister.

The result fell short of the sweeping victory for ND predicted by some pollsters, but gives the conservatives a workable overall majority with 158 seats in the 300-member parliament, thanks to a bonus of 50 seats that is awarded to the party that wins the most seats under Greece’s modified proportional representation electoral system. Syriza will have 86 seats.

This means that Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the ND leader, has enough seats to govern without having to form a coalition, unlike his predecessors as prime minister during the Greek debt crisis that has consumed the past decade.

The former McKinsey consultant has bold plans to overhaul the country’s creaking bureaucracy, attract foreign investment and create enough new jobs to stem the exodus of skilled young workers. He will face opposition from Syriza’s placemen in the civil service and regulatory bodies. Yet some worry that when Mr Mitsotakis’s political honeymoon is over, old rivalries and clientelism in ND will resurface and undermine his efforts to reform. Others see him as just the latest manifestation of the old dynastic establishment that got Greece into trouble in the first place. He is the son of a previous prime minister; his older sister served as mayor of Athens; and the mayor-elect of Athens is her son.

Alexis Tsipras, the reformed firebrand who leads Syriza (an acronym meaning Coalition of the Radical Left) is expected to make a dignified exit on July 8th by officially welcoming Mr Mitsotakis to the prime minister’s office. After Syriza finished nine percentage points behind ND at the European elections in May, Mr Tsipras decided to call a snap poll rather than wait for his government’s term to run out in October. He may have underestimated the extent of popular dissatisfaction with high taxes and an 18% unemployment rate. “It’s been a year since we left the last bailout, but the better times Syriza promised are nowhere to be seen,” said Stefanos Pierides, an electrical-goods salesman in a left-wing district of Athens. Mr Tsipras took over at the depth of the Greek crisis and, after a bad start, managed to turn things around, but neither far enough nor fast enough. He will now wait in opposition in the hope that a similar fate will befall Mr Mitsotakis.

Four other parties cleared the 3% of the vote threshold for entering parliament. Among them is MeRA25, founded by Yanis Varoufakis, a maverick economist who served as finance minister in 2015 during Syriza’s first six months in power. His party won 3.4% of the vote and nine seats. Now that he is back in the national spotlight, Mr Varoufakis is likely to play a gadfly’s role, attacking both main parties. On election night he warned that Mr Mitsotakis’s policies could push Greece into a fourth international bailout.

Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi party, was excluded from parliament after winning 2.9% of the vote, just under the threshold. Its disruptive nationalist appeal (it wants immigrants to go home and Greek women to have more Greek babies) has faded since Greece emerged from its third bailout. Its leaders have been keeping a low profile. They have been on trial for over four years on various charges including that of involvement in the stabbing to death of a popular Greek rapper.

But nationalist populism is not yet over in Greece. A newish party, Hellenic Solution, will enter parliament for the first time with 10 seats after winning 3.7% of the vote. Its leader, Kyriakos Velopoulos, a successful exporter of medicinal plants, wants to build a wall in northern Greece to keep out migrants and hold a referendum on whether to introduce the death penalty for drug dealers and child molesters.