The Tories could be nice but they are not

Democracy is the primary reason that (arrogant) statists are not a direct threat to our liberties. Without democracy many people would die as we have seen in history... but with democracy even though statists are arrogant and wrong we can still be relatively safe. In a democracy statists are relatively unthreatening so we can say that democracy is bad news for criminals.

The problem with fptp is that even if we have convinced someone that socialism is wrong it does not necessarily follow that they will vote for the party of the centre-right... unless they feel (as a voter) that they have an obligation to do so. If we feel 'lucky' and grateful to have been given democracy then such an obligation might exist. With proportional representation it is possible as a non-socialist to vote without feeling that we are compromising our principles. The problem with fptp is that it is hard to imagine a monolithic fptp party to be a true representation of our views... it is likely that for some reason the party of the centre-right (the Tories) will have offended or oppressed people in some way which we cannot defend. By voting for them we are in some way responsible and so we do not want to vote for the Tories. Even though we would be willing to vote for a (smaller) liberal party under a system of proportional representation. With fptp the anti-socialists lose votes because it is difficult to accommodate all of the centre-right in one large party. The principle of the party being a 'broad church' for the right means that we must align ourselves with some unpleasant views if we seek to protect ourselves at the ballot box. To be tolerable to liberals the Tory party must risk offending some of its more bigoted base by failing to be socially authoritarian. It's not impossible for the party of the centre-right to be acceptable to social liberals... it's just that it hasn't happened yet. There is no intrinsic reason for the party of the centre-right in a fptp system to be (socially) offensive... it is merely a matter of precedent that this is the case. The Tories could be nice and there is no good reason why they are not so.