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.
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11 Comments
Very interesting to see how this one plays out. The Conservative party is not a comfortable place for One Nation Tories at present and it is natural for some of them to think that one small step to the left and they will fall into the loving, and grateful arms of the Liberal Democrats. Some Tonbridge Tories may be seduced by that illusion.
In recent years one or two high profile Tories have defected but have failed to make their mark. Anyone seen Heidi Allen recently ? The Libs Dems have moved towards more progressive positions since the coalition. It is no longer the party of David Laws or Jeremy Browne. Today a One Nation Tory and a Liberal Democrat are very different creatures, with different priorities. I wish Cody well, but I fear it will not end well.
Hello Cory. it’s good to have you on board.
I think your article is very important.
I’m not sure that One National Conservatives and Social Liberals need be all that far apart. You will know better than me but I understand One Nation Tories as springing from the Burkian tradition of reforming in order to preserve and looking to the “little platoons”. Those are not far away from the reliance of liberals on institutions (while wanting to reform them) and standard liberal ideas of dispersing power to as low a level as possible. And of course you know that Burke was a Whig – one of the groups that came together to form the Liberal party in the 1850s.
And (at the risk of being a wee bit provocative), as Hayek points out (+) : “Burke remained an Old Whig to the end and would have shuddered at the thought of being regarded as a Tory.”
(+) In his essay “Why I am a not a Conservative”
@ Tristan Ward. Sorry, Tristan, but basing your political philosophy on someone who died 229 years ago and was ambivalent about the slave trade is stretching the elastic more than a fair bit.
With Burnhams Labour party edging to the left and Badenochs Conservatives racing off to the right the centre ground is wide open and ours for the taking. We must seize the chance now before reality hits the Conservatives and they try to retake the centre ground. An emphasis on tax cuts and increased defence spending is to be welcomed. I would like to see a tougher approach to immigration without leaving the ECHR . I expect it will come in time.
It appears that the lessons of 2010-15 have not been learned for people who weren’t around when all of that occurred, and as someone whose dad was involved in DDay and Arnhem (and remember the effect it had on him) I regret the use of what happened in those places as a political simile.
@ David Raw
The situation in 2026 is completely different from that in 2010. Today the right is spilt, the threat is that the authoritarian right take control, and the political space and opportunity is in the liberal centre.
It is our duty to fight and defeat authoritarians – it is what liberals are all about.
especially in the world of Trump, Badenoch, Farage, Putin, and Le Penn.
To fail to try to include as many people as possible in the liberal coalition in the name of ideological purity (or for almost any other reason) would be a dereliction of that duty.
@ David Raw
“basing your political philosophy on someone who died 229 years ago”
Are you suggesting the Lib Dems should:
1) abandon the idea of reforming in order to preserve (making us a revolutionary party rather than a reforming one); and
2) abandon devolving power to the lowest level possible and practical?
And I have to say the idea of ignoring the ideas of one of liberalism’s most significant political philosophers because he lived a long time ago and was “ambivalent” – your word – about the slave trade at that time is very odd indeed – especially as Burke demonstrably hated tyranny and consistently campaigned against it. To be consistent you would have to ignore the thinking of Hume, Hobbs, Aristotle, Cicero and countless others important to liberal thinking.
Yet again you apply the standards of the 21st centaury to the past.
While I agree that the LD’s need to grasp this opportunity to expand the voter base including to those voters who have historically voted Tory, I cannot agree with the “one nation Tories” being unchallenged in their views. These would presumably be the same group who said Wales shouldn’t get any extra funding because HS2 would improve rail to Crewe? Or allowed the SNP to win an early leadership debate many years ago because the UK leaders simply didn’t know enough about Scotland to effectively challenge them? Or implement cuts to Welfare spending without proper investing in the various north of England towns that led the Financial Times to write an article on Blackpool GPs diagnosing people with SLS (S**t lives sydrome). Pointing this out is no way to win then over of course and that may be the main aim, but a good number of “one nation Tories” simply aren’t and have already gone to Reform or followed Kemi’s Tories further right.
Yesterday we can from a lowly third to win comfortable in a rural Tunbridge Wells ward.
There are two more similar type wards also voting today we were third or no show last time. See what happens.
However going to Tonbridge Tories will not help us up here in London, the Midlands and the North. We need a new image in charge, is it time for perhaps Cashman to be the Leader and another the Parliamentary team leader.
I suspect that the “Liberal Tories” the author refers to are now extinct – the last of them were thrown out of the Conservatives by Johnson in 2019.
Paul R
“I suspect that the “Liberal Tories” the author refers to are now extinct – the last of them were thrown out of the Conservatives by Johnson in 2019”
On the contrary. They are alive and well and looking for a political home. Google Prosper UK, figureheads for which are David Gauke, Amber Rudd, Ruth Davidson and Andy Street.
Prosper UK may be the the political descendants of those conservative liberals who drifted over to the Conservative party in first half of the 20th centaury, exasperated with Liberal Party factionalism and remoteness from power, such as John Simon’s National Liberals.