Canada today elected its first Conservative government in 12 years as the traditionally peaceable voters decisively ended their love affair with the scandal-riven Liberals.

The Conservatives, led by Stephen Harper, will have 124 seats in parliament. Although 31 below the 155 required for an absolute majority, the party has 21 more seats than the defeated ruling party.

With no natural allies in the four-party parliament, The Conservatives will need to look to either the socialist New Democrats or the separatist Bloc Quebecois to push through legislation.

The new government's ambitions for tax cuts for the middle-classes, increased military spending and closer ties to Washington are likely to be curbed and history suggests that the minority government is unlikely to be stable in the long-term.

Although the scale of the victory is below forecasts, it remains a major personal triumph for Stephen Harper, a 46-year-old economist who formed the Conservatives only two years ago by merging the two failing right-wing parties.

The result is a punishing blow for the outgoing Prime Minister, Paul Martin, who inherited a large majority when he took over two years ago but has has since presided over a jaded and corruption-stained party. Conceding defeat, he said that he would not lead the Liberals, long considered Canada's natural ruling party, into another general election.

The Conservatives won 36.3 per cent of the popular vote while the Liberals won 30.2 per cent, their second worst showing since Canada gained independence in 1867.

"Each and every day I will assure you of one thing - I will dedicate myself to making Canada more united, stronger, more prosperous and a safer country," Mr Harper told an ecstatic crowd in his home city of Calgary.

The resurgence of a centre-right group which has spent more than a decade in the political wilderness, against a leader desperate to ascend to the premiership but widely considered ill-prepared, has led to some commentators suggesting possible parallels with the future of Britain.

Mr Harper's readiness to ditch some traditional policies - such as opposition to abortion and gay marriage - provided an echo of David Cameron’s modernisation of the Tories in Britain. The Canadian Conservatives fell even further from grace than their British counterparts, hitting a low point at which the party had only two seats in Ottawa’s House of Commons.

In the seven-week campaign, opponents charged that Mr Harper's fresh-faced new image masked a hardline right-wing agenda, with much in common with the United States political powerbase of President Bush, who is unpopular in Canada.

Mr Harper has made no secret of his intention to repair relations with the White House, which have been strained by Mr Martin's vocal opposition to the Iraq War and American tariffs on Canadian timber.

The result was generally considered to be a deliberate punishment vote by the electorate in response to a series of scandals which have swirled around the Liberals. The most serious involved the diversion of tens of millions of dollars supposed to persuade Quebec to stay in the union in a 1995 referendum which ended up in the pockets of Liberal cronies.

The New Democrats won 29 seats - their best showing since 1988. There will be one independent, a Quebec talk show host who has made a career out of railing against what he calls 'the Ottawa establishment'.

Former British Conservative leader Michael Howard said that the victory in Canada -following last year’s victory for Angela Merkel’s centre-right CDU in Germany - was a sign that voters worldwide are shifting away from the centre-left.

“I think we are seeing a recognition across the world of the failure of the centre-left to deliver,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“We have seen it spectacularly in Germany. We have now seen it in Canada. I believe we will see it in other countries, and I hope that this will be one of them.

He added mischievously: “There are some very marked similarities in Canada, where the defeated Prime Minister is someone who was finance minister for a very long time, wanted to take over the top job much earlier than he was allowed to and, when he got the top job, proved to be a long way short of a success in it..."

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