AT LAST the deadlock has been broken. In an election on May 2nd, after seven years in which no party has enjoyed a majority in Canada's House of Commons, Stephen Harper, the prime minister for the past five of them, won a clear mandate for his Conservative Party. In doing so, he can claim to have redrawn his country's political map (see article). Only a few years ago, it was the Liberals who were Canada's “natural party of government”. But they have been humiliated. Not only did their leader, Michael Ignatieff, fail to win his seat, but they were outflanked to their left by the New Democrats (NDP), a niche party that now becomes the official opposition. The NDP did especially well in French-speaking Quebec, at the expense of the separatist Bloc Québécois.

Two sets of reasons explain this shift in the political landscape. The first is that Canada is quietly changing. The Liberals ruled for most of the 20th century by offering consensual, centrist politics with a dash of European social democracy to a coalition of industrial workers, the suburban middle class and immigrants. But the Liberals' industrial base has contracted and Canada's centre of economic gravity has shifted, westward and towards natural resources. And many immigrants have discovered that they rather like the Conservative appeal to the rugged individualism and family values of the Prairies.

Secondly, Mr Harper out-fought and out-thought his opponents. Mr Ignatieff, a former academic, unwisely triggered an election for which his party was ill-prepared by choosing to bring down the government over its contempt of parliament in concealing the true cost of new fighter jets and prisons. That was an important issue of principle, to be sure, but hardly one that swayed many voters. They proved more susceptible to relentless Conservative ads portraying Mr Ignatieff as an elitist. Mr Harper stuck to a simple mantra: his successful stewardship of the economy, promises of tax cuts, stronger defence and tougher measures against crime. Mr Ignatieff tacked to the left, seeking to match the NDP's promises of federal largesse. In doing so he surrendered the centre ground to the Conservatives. That should be reason enough for the next Liberal leader to hesitate before heeding calls to merge with the NDP.

Within this broader narrative, there is a subplot. For 20 years the Bloc Québécois has been a spoiling force in Ottawa. Its near-annihilation does not mean that Quebec separatism is spent, but at least many more Quebeckers now seem to want to play a more constructive role in federal politics.

Don't forget the moderate majority

Mr Harper is doubtless delighted that the NDP's rise turns politics into a straight fight between right and left. Liberal commentators see in Mr Harper, and his remaking of Canadian conservatism as a more aggressive and right-wing force, a northern cloning of George Bush and today's American Republican Party. If so, the prime minister should not be lulled by the clear result delivered by the first-past-the-post electoral system into imagining that Canadians have become tea-partiers. His new majority, secured with only 39.6% of the vote, allows him to press on with some useful measures, such as a cut in corporate tax. But it also means that he has no excuse for not tackling difficult issues such as health-service and pension reform, and environmental policy. And it makes it all the more important that his government is clearly accountable to parliament and acts less secretively than it did when in a minority.

In victory Mr Harper insisted that he will spend the next four years “governing for all Canadians”. That is good advice, and he should follow it—otherwise he may find that reports of the death of Liberal Canada are premature.