CHARLES KENNEDY dismissed David Cameron’s recent overtures to Liberal Democrat supporters with the hauteur of a grand duchess. “Being a liberal,” he said sniffily, “is about more than just taking off your tie.”

Yet, as a former Conservative MP, who joined the Lib Dems three years ago, I am not sure that Mr Kennedy was right to be so dismissive. Mr Cameron’s charm offensive deserves to be taken seriously and Liberal Democrats should be in no doubt about what it means.

Mr Cameron has made clear that he intends to move the Conservatives back on to the middle ground. If he has his way, the new conservatism will be very different to the brutal realism of Thatcherite “shock therapy”. It will be what most of Middle Britain wants the Conservative Party to be: compassionate, caring and competent. The party’s priorities, such as concern for the environment, will be similar to those of many Liberal Democrats.

Anyone who doubts the sincerity of Mr Cameron’s intent should look at the sacred cows he has already slaughtered. The Tories will no longer be the “mouthpiece” of big business, he says. Even asylum-seekers, the favourite scapegoats of the Daily Mail and the hard Right, find favour with him and he tells us to take them “to our hearts”. There is, of course, a possibility that his party may not back him but the Neanderthal faction appears, at last, to have been buried under the weight of Mr Cameron’s mandate for reform.

What does this mean for Lib Dems and, particularly, for those many Tories who turned to them when the Conservative Party appeared to have taken leave of its senses?

It may mean an opportunity both to develop concerted opposition to an increasingly remote and authoritarian Government, and to lay the foundations for a moderate, centre-right government in an era of more consensual politics. Despite the difficulties facing Mr Kennedy, the Liberal Democrats are now better placed than at any time in their history to enter government after the next election. If they are to do so, indeed if they are to survive in strength, they need to understand clearly what Lenin called “the correlation of forces”. They need too to avoid sinking into what he also referred to as “infantile liberalism”. It will take both a hard-headed analysis of the current situation and courage.

In the past, the Liberal Democrats prospered largely because of the extremism of one or other of the two “main” parties. Recently though, they have been taken seriously on their own merits. They have been proved right on several important issues — such as Iraq and civil liberties — and their frontbench team is full of talent, mainly from the right of the party.

Despite the recent criticism of him, Mr Kennedy is the most successful centre party leader in electoral terms since the Second World War. Yet, he is also the cause of the party’s greatest disappointment. At the election, the Lib Dem share of the vote was higher than ever before. On polling day, expectations were so high that every Liberal Democrat candidate was confident that, at last, the moment of the “breaking of the mould” had arrived.

It did not happen. A great opportunity was squandered. A silly, strategic blunder spoilt the chance of a breakthrough. Faced with the prospect of a war on two fronts against a triumphant Labour Party and a weak but recovering Conservative Party, the Lib Dems needed a political equivalent of the Schlieffen Plan. The overwhelming majority of their target seats were Tory-held and the Tories were in second position in many Lib Dem seats, particularly in the West Country. The plan should have been to concentrate on knocking out the Tories in the West before Labour could mobilise in the East.

However, to achieve that objective would have required a determined effort to take Tory territory by softening leftist policies designed to embarrass Labour. That was, alas, unthinkable to those of Mr Kennedy’s advisers for whom left-wing chic is an important element of their “infantile liberalism”. This was impressed upon me when a former senior Tory minister, who was one of three ex-Conservative MPs on the point of joining the Liberal Democrats, was turned down “on political grounds” and Brian Sedgemore, Tony Benn’s former PPS, was welcomed into the fold by a grinning Mr Kennedy.

Circumstances have changed. The Liberal Democrats will no longer be able to advance at the expense of a party perceived as “extreme” on their right flank. Like the German High Command in 1914, the Lib Dem leadership is eingekesselt. On all sides, much to their evident consternation, they face the prospect of being surrounded by reasonableness.

What is needed is a new strategic concept for operating effectively in an era of more consensual politics. The goal will remain the same: a fair, free and open society in which both individual liberty and the central importance of the community are safeguarded. This will not be achieved by the triumph of any one party but by new pacts and alliances.

The Lib Dems, and particularly those on the right of their party in marginal seats, need to consider a realignment. If Mr Cameron is as good as his word, and the Conservative Party does change and become genuinely “liberal”, there should be nothing to prevent an electoral pact with the Tories.

Such a pact, which might initially be organised informally or even on a regional basis, would be good both for Britain and the cause of liberalism. It need not mean a full cessation of hostilities, but might involve a ceasefire in strategically important seats. It would very possibly bring Lib Dems into government and enable the party to hold a large number of marginal seats that would, otherwise, be lost to the Conservatives. The only alternative will be to fight and die obstinately, overwhelmed by a tide of reasonableness.

Harold Elletson, Tory MP for Blackpool North in 1992-97, is chairman of the Liberal Democrats’ Foreign Affairs Forum

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