Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal democrat leader, has founded a new political movement which will finance moderate parliamentary candidates from all parties in a bid to stop British politics being “dragged away to the extremes”.

The movement, called More United UK, has said it will finance political candidates from all political parties and supply them with the on-the-ground campaigners.

The entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox and historians Dan Snow and Simon Schama have all pledged their support for the group, which the former Lib Dem leader said was about “ordinary people” rather than politicians.