AS THE results of the election for half of the seats in the Diet’s upper house rolled in, Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, beamed happily. And why not? Admittedly, voter turnout was low. But this was his third sweeping election victory since he and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) returned to power in late 2012. And it was won despite a spluttering economy and popular misgivings about Mr Abe’s abiding interest in constitutional change.

The LDP, with its junior partner, Komeito, won 70 out of the 121 seats up for the grabs. Not only does the ruling coalition now firmly control the upper house. More importantly for Mr Abe, when counting the upper-house seats held by a group of lesser parties that also want to unshackle Japan from its pacifist constitution, Mr Abe can now claim a two-thirds majority in both upper and lower houses of the Diet. That in theory gives him the long-coveted supermajorities required before asking voters for their approval to change a constitution that has never been amended.

For now, Mr Abe says, all attention will be on boosting the economy. For all the trumpeted “Abenomics” of the past three years, including both monetary and fiscal stimulus, business confidence is flat, wages are stagnant and, even though jobs are easy enough to find, consumption remains sluggish. Mr Abe, his advisers say, has finally come to realise that the problems with the economy are not so much cyclical as secular, and to do with a shrinking population and rigid work practices, including a two-tier labour market of cosseted permanent employees and a raft of less-protected employees on non-regular contracts—many of them young Japanese.

Having already postponed a planned rise in the consumption tax, Mr Abe has now instructed the finance ministery to draw up an emergency “supplementary” budget for the autumn, with a fiscal stimulus of perhaps ¥10 trillion ($99 billion), equivalent to about 2% of GDP, all to be added to a national debt that is pushing 250% of GDP. But the main legislation hinted at for the autumn Diet session is to tackle those labour-market inequities head-on. The political will for this has eluded Mr Abe to date.

Given the inefficacy of Abenomics in improving many ordinary people’s lives, it is remarkable that the opposition failed, yet again, to land punches during this election. Indeed the main opposition, the Democratic Party (DP), lost 12 seats.

Perhaps even post-Brexit turmoil in Europe played its part, encouraging voters to go for the stability that Mr Abe represents. More than that, it did not help that the DP’s head, Katsuya Okada, however decent a man, is devoid of charisma. The DP’s tactical agreement to co-ordinate fielding candidates with three disparate opposition parties, including the Japanese Communist Party, turned off some of its former supporters. So, too, did the DP’s failure to counter the LDP’s economic policies with an economic programme of its own. Lastly, choosing to contest the upper-house election almost exclusively on opposition to constitutional change unsettled a significant share of senior DP members who, aware of a deteriorating security environment for Japan (ie, a rising China and a nuclear North Korea), are in favour of such change. Whether Mr Okada now thinks he can stay on is unclear.

Craftily, Mr Abe played down constitutional change during the campaign: a survey by NHK, the public broadcaster, found only 11% of respondents citing constitutional matters as of greater concern to them than bread-and-butter issues. Yet for many in the LDP, the constitution of 1947, especially its Article 9, which renounces war and even the right to maintain a standing army, is a humiliating remnant of the American occupation following Japan’s defeat in the second world war.

For Mr Abe, revising the constitution is a lifelong obsession. He has called for a cross-party panel to review the options during the Diet’s summer recess. But close advisers say that he will not push for early change. Brexit, they say, has come as a stark reminder to him about how a referendum can divide rather than unite a country—and risk producing a “wrong” outcome. Besides, even though a swathe of politicians, including in the Buddhist and nominally pacifist Komeito, believes in changing the constitution, no consensus exists on what the changes should be. While some care about Article 9, others are more concerned with enshrining human rights or simply revamping the procedures for amending the constitution. Natsuo Yamaguchi, Komeito’s leader, for one, has been quick to warn against tampering with the constitution’s pacifist clause.

So, no immediate drive for constitutional reform, perhaps. All the more reason, then, despite the obstacles to structural reform, to judge Mr Abe now by his promise to transform his country’s labour markets. The problem is that he promised much before.