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.

So, the Liberal Democrats must win this argument among Tonbridge Tory activists, donors and future candidates, not wait for Faragezilla to vaporise the Wets. Layla Moran’s insistence in the Daily T that liberals are not merely left-wingers was a good start. So are the softer signals. Defending Churchill on the banknote costs almost nothing, yet tells a certain voter that tradition is not regarded as a disease.

But how else do you win these Tonbridge Tories, or One Nationers? They are not so much a mass movement as an informal clique of the good-chap politicians of government: people who tell the truth when it is inconvenient and would rather settle a thing than win an argument on television. You do not collect them with a press release. You coax them. Dining clubs, shared associations and the slow work of making the Liberal Democrats feel like a natural intellectual home. You grow your own, too: councillors first, then an intellectual case, and eventually a few in Parliament. The easiest place to begin might be with two peerages. Call them One Nation Liberals and put them on the red benches. Borrow the old Labour trick: find a useful Tory rebel and give them a job. Blair sent Chris Patten to Brussels. And Keir put Amber Rudd on the Prison Review.

Unease about former Conservatives is reasonable. Demanding ideological conversion is not. Nor should anyone behave as though they are about to launch a coup d’état. This is a partnership, not a takeover. At most, they will be a pressure group with a few representatives to reflect the breadth of the tent. Before anyone floats a new centre-right party, remember that it risks damaging target seats and money both sides need to hold and win. A broad centre requires more than one temperament under the same roof.

That is also the intellectual case. One Nation can sit between the Social Liberal and the Classical Liberal without becoming either. The first looks to the state for equality. The second looks to the market for liberty. One Nation looks first to the country. It will use the state, or restrain it, as the nation requires. It is not Thatcherite by default. Freedom matters. So does social peace. Society is not the market, and it is not the state.

On a side note, it is also time to talk more about business, too. Not by outflanking the Conservatives. That is a mug’s game. One popular tax cut aimed at a Labour blind spot would do more. Build a reputation as the party that understands how a firm works. The Tories can promise the world for nothing. They will not write the Budget. The Liberal Democrats might.

There remains the matter of seriousness. A One Nation Tory, when asked in an interview a few years ago why they had not jumped ship, put it down to reputation. The Liberal Democrats did not look like a serious national party. If one wanted power, one joined Labour or the Conservatives. That makes sense if the party is a protest or stunt vehicle. It makes less sense if it is to become the intellectual home of the broad centre and a serious kingmaker in deciding who governs Britain. That is the message that now has to be pushed.

The point is not to persuade every Conservative that they have been a liberal all along. Nor is it to turn Liberal Democrats into Conservatives, or Conservatives into Social Liberals. It is to give One Nation and Liberal Conservatives somewhere to go without asking them to leave their politics at the door. They may not be a mass constituency, but they are an important part of the coalition: keeping them in the tent stabilises the flank and gives the centre more room to move.

* Cody Butler joined the Liberal Democrats from the Conservative Party in 2026.