The Liberal Democrats must welcome disaffected Blairites and One-Nation Tories

Campaigning alongside a Lib Dem councillor recently, I mentioned the several recent high profile defections of Blairites to the Conservatives. I was a little disappointed they'd felt that the obvious choice was to go to the Blues.

People that liked Tony Blair more than they liked the Labour brand in general are precisely the kind of people that handed the party thirteen years of office. Their exodus from Labour, a backlash fuelled by the anti-New Labour revolution that put Ed Miliband in power, was a sign that the party was letting an election victory slip out of its sights.

To my surprise, the councillor that I was speaking to disagreed that we should be the natural home for Blairites. Of course, most Labour supporters wouldn't really fit into our party, but we should still be extending a hand to those that feel Labour no longer offers a vision they can relate to.

In the century since the Liberals were an election-winning force nationally, we've lost many of our strains of thought, much to Labour and much to the Conservatives. If we are to build on our success in Government, we must attract people back.

A Lib Dem that had defectedfrom the Conservatives told me recently "I'd always been a liberal Conservative, now I'm a conservative Liberal". Many One Nation Tories may find themselves in a similar position to Blairites. I saw recently how frosty a reception people like Ken Clarke get from typical Thatcherite Tory activists. They don't believe those types belong in their party. Much of the left of the Tory party evolved from those Liberals that historically chose ever closer co-operation with the Conservatives. Michael Heseltine fought his first election as a National Liberal, by the time he got elected, the party had merged with the Conservatives.

By 2012, pro-European Conservatives have been reduced to an obscure fringe, Cameron's leadership distracting from the real right wing nature of its grassroots, most of which will remember little of the pre-Thatcher party.

Many Liberal Democrats reading this may well think 'But One Nation Tories aren't Liberals and nor are Blairites!'. That's a fair point but it's only through widening our membership that we can become a better party than we are currently.

There's been a disturbing trend of members advocating ideological purity recently, a slow reaction to the accusation that our typically centre-left party has been hijacked by a gang of centre-right 'Orange Bookers'. That's nonsense but that won't stop people towards the right of the party calling themselves 'real liberals' and those on the left 'the mainstream'.

It gets more ludicrous by the day with new factions left, right and centre. To mature as a party, we need to hold on to our ability to work positively with people with similar but different views. If that means taking on people that we have historically fought against in elections, I say that we should be prepared to welcome them.

Otherwise, we risk conceding the lion's share of the centre ground to the Conservatives.

* Rich Clare is president of Sheffield Hallam University Lib Dems and writes on the blog 'A brief history of liberty'