You slur if you want to, but be sure it’s right and don’t complain when you yourself are slurred

“Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands:
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
         And makes me poor indeed.“

Othello, William Shakespeare

There was a minor misunderstanding yesterday on the ConHome comments section.

My colleague Tali Fraser marked the Lib Dem Conference by asking why any Conservatives would defect to a party with leader so wedded to buffoonish PR stunts (that even his party grow weary of) and whose central defining purpose is as hard to pin down as Labour are trying to do with their own Government.

Perhaps predictably it prompted calls for all the supposed ‘army of Lib Dems’ in the Conservative party to leave immediately or the party they regularly claim is already dead will be even more…what would it even be…’deader’?

A man I have a lot of time for, Lord Frost, challenged our columnist Lord Willetts back in May, where he argued – and he’s a person worth listening to – the Conservative party needed to consolidate around a narrower more traditional form of Conservatism. I agree. It was only in the last line where he he said if MPs could not accept a truly Conservative tradional platform for the future, they should ‘join the Lib Dems’.

It was a punchy outro but I think he had in mind those Tories never sold on Brexit, the remnants of remain, what Thatcherites called ‘wets’ remaining in the party. I don’t even think he started the idea, but it was a punchy finish to an article worth your time.

Now, from disaffected Tories this has metastasised to mean; there are those refusing to leave who are somehow active Lib Dems trying to sabotage the Tories from within. It’s morphed from the exit line of a reasoned argument about party values to a cover all slur aimed at  ‘any MP I don’t like or I think isn’t ‘right’ enough’. That line seems drawn somewhere to the right of the late great Lord Tebbit.

I say misunderstanding because when I asked people to name who is in this supposed swathe of treacherous or traitorous individuals those same people assumed I was defending their politics and their reputations. Whilst I know many MPs in the Conservative party who are seen under this increasingly amorphous group of ‘Lib Dem interlopers’ I’m going to crave their indulgence to say I was not defending them or their politics but pointing out this new ‘slur de jour’ is increasingly wildly inaccurate.

I’ll start with me, so we can dispense with any positive bias charges.

Whilst a pretty pragmatic person who is not afraid of trade offs and likes to fix things so they work, I’m not really what you’d describe as left of the Tory party. I supported Brexit, worked for a man whose heroes are Reagan and Thatcher. I’m a fiscal conservative and a passionate believer that unless we fix our financial situation with quite radical cuts to public spending, and pull every possible lever to unleash the potential of the private sector to drive economic growth we are all in deep deep trouble. Nothing less will save the country, let alone any party.

Frankly those that know me, know I’m not even centre of the centre but a bit further right. Whatever, if that makes me a Lib Dem, then go ahead. Knock yourselves out. It’s as meaningless as when those on the left brand anyone to the right of Corbyn a ‘facist’.

This then is the problem of saying all the Tories need to do is expel their mass of ‘Lib Dem’ MP squatters. They aren’t Lib Dems.

Ask people to list who they mean and you get about four names (out of 120) who are unashamedly of the one nation tradition of the party, None of whom have queued up to jump on Ed Davey’s paddle board and contrary to the meme, sorry to spoil it, would not be happier if they did. They are Conservatives, who their constituents elected as Conservatives. It’s their voters opinion being slurred here as much as the individual.

At least three names offered to me yesterday aren’t even MPs anymore! One name proffered was ‘Mel Stride’ which I think is a very uncharitable slur from people who clearly haven’t been – or don’t want to – listen to a thing he’s said since becoming shadow Chancellor.

Those true One Nation Conservatives who get branded as the ‘Lib Dem’ drag anchors on the revival – or even resuscitation – of the Tory party are not members of some mighty controlling cabal or active Lib Dem infiltration group. The idea that they are holding back Kemi Badenoch’s ‘renewal under new leadership’ is frankly for the birds. As a political grouping they understand only to well that the party is led by someone proud to have declared she was ‘of the right’, and whose rival, and, let’s not deny it, want-to-be successor, is undoubtedly so. I haven’t seen any of them rebellious or undermining even if it’s not a direction they’d prefer. If anything they are quite quiet. Perhaps, dare I say it, too quiet.

One senior Tory who has watched this desire to ‘root out the secret Lib Dems’ develop sent me a message the last time it cropped up:

“There are those Conservatives, and former Conservatives, who believe that somehow this purifying the party from the right is the answer to Reform and the way back to power. May god protect us all from such utter bollocks. The past success of our party was built on tolerance within a broad church – a party that could embrace Chris Patten and Iain Duncan Smith. Never forget we lost five seats at the last election to Reform and over fifty to the LibDems”

Now you and I may not agree with all of that but it doesn’t sound like someone who wants to pack it in and join a party they see as a localised electoral threat, nor someone who wants everyone in the Conservative party to be the same as them.

From my vantage point the party is trying very hard to move away from the ‘talk right govern left’ issues of the last Government. It’s not an unqualified success yet, and there’s a lot of ‘this better be good’ expectation around the coming Conference but that’s not do do with a bunch of uncover Lib Dem moles. Frankly the people who use this line most have already decided the Conservatives ‘are finished’ so what do they care?

So far, if hidden moles there must be, we’ve lost Conservatives to Reform, a party who don’t hide their desire to destroy us, and the ‘uni-party’ they created to coagulate blame. I think it would be most unwise not to assume there’s another defector in the pipeline to be unveiled on the eve of Tory Party Conference. Whatever happens our hidden embedded switchers are not heading towards the golden parrot!

I watched and defended, as some of the people most vocal about the Tory ‘lib dem problem’ now, got slurred endlessly from 2016 onwards as ‘thick’, ‘racist’, ‘xenophobic’ and ‘far right’. Left wing commentators fill the airwaves with condemnation of Tory and Reform ‘language’ branding them whatever the insult of the day is, after ‘gammon’. Why would people who’ve been through this, suffered these ‘slings and arrows’ do it back with such relish to Tory MPs they view as too ‘centrist’ and if so, boy, that centre has shifted.

I’m looking forward to a true blue Conservative agenda emerging from the party soon, and in the coming years. Radical and thought through but aspiring to what most seem to think is what we should be about; aspiration, patriotism, liberty, security, the rule of law, free trade, family, sound money and smaller government. If we don’t the party is going to wither. That will be the whole party’s fault not a handful of scapegoats who aren’t really as described.

Sticks and stones are occupational hazard of politics, name calling is just playground childishness.