Author Archives: Cody Butler

How to capture the Tonbridge Tories

By Cody Butler | Wed 23rd September 2026 - 2:30 pm

In 2025, a think-tank director pressed several volumes on Ted Heath, along with Ian Gilmour and Mark Garnett’s Whatever Happened to the Tories?, into my hands. That led to a lethal intellectual falling-out with the Conservatives, and then to a thesis: the centre ought to unite. I heeded the call and joined the Liberal Democrats. But such a project cannot live on tactical votes. It requires a serious occupation of the Tonbridge Tory.

To do that, you need representatives. Voters can be spoken to in public. Ground is held by people. That means a garrison. Some will want to slot in a Liberal of their own and call the job done. That mistakes a Dieppe raid for D-Day. So long as a better centre-right alternative exists, the voter is only on loan. What is needed is a Légion étrangère of Liberal Tories. They need not sit for Tonbridge. They only need to be in the party. That gives the party room to lean left or right when the election requires it, without either move looking like a desertion of the other. It is the same bargain that keeps Liberal Tories and Brexiteer Tories in the Conservatives: the chance that, one day, it will be their turn at the wheel.

This prophecy can be fulfilled because the centre-left have little patience for a formal deal with the Conservative Party. Once that is admitted, ‘unite the right’ writes itself. A weakened Conservative Party would have little reason to preserve its old balance, leaving moderates stranded. Many MPs will stay from loyalty, habit, or the touching belief that next year will be more sensible. But it may be their Arnhem.