This article first appeared in the Daily Telegraph.

Show up at a Conservative Party function and it’s a fair bet that someone will engage you in a discussion about what to do about Reform UK. It’s also likely that no one will talk about the threat posed to the Conservative Party by the Liberal Democrats.

The fact remains that if Kemi Badenoch is to make electoral progress, she has to fight off an attack from both Reform UK on the Right and the yellow peril on the Left. You could argue that it was Reform votes rather than LibDem votes that enabled the LibDems to steal more than 50 seats from the Conservatives last July, but a significant number of former Tory voters transferred their allegiances, and – as we all know – once you’ve done something once, it’s much easier to do it a second time around.

I’ve interviewed quite a few of the new LibDem intake over the past seven months and I have noticed they all have one thing in common. Without exception, if you met them at a social occasion and they told you they were an MP, you’d assume they were Conservatives. They look like Conservatives, they talk like Conservatives, and many of their beliefs seem to be in line with various strands of Conservative thought.

They would all be on the David Laws side of the LibDems, with no beard or a pair of sandals to be seen (perhaps I exaggerate on the beard front). Some of them – whisper it – even seem “Brexity”.

It’s unfair to single any out... so let’s do it. Jess Brown-Fuller defeated Gillian Keegan in Chichester, but put them in a political identity parade and you’d have difficulty in telling them apart. Mike Martin, the new LibDem MP for Tunbridge Wells can “outhawk” most Conservatives on defence. Lisa Smart from Hazel Grove, who impressed on BBC’s Question Time this week and within weeks of being elected was made shadow home secretary by Sir Ed Davey, takes a very no nonsense approach to law and order. Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne), Bobby Dean (Carshalton & Wallington) and Luke Taylor (Sutton & Cheam) all won their seats from the Conservatives and will be difficult to shift, partly because they don’t frighten natural Tory voters.

So yes, Kemi Badenoch needs to win back voters who have gone to Reform, but she must be careful, especially in her rhetoric, to remember that the maxim that parties win from the centre-ground remains just as true today as it ever did. And banging on about the ECHR is not the way to do it.