Fake tan, friendship beads and Bobby J hats: Leadership candidates’ merchandise handed out to win over Tories

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Louise Thomas

Editor

Attendees of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham have seen the four leadership hopefuls wanting to replace Rishi Sunak handing out all manner of merchandise - from lollipops to beauty products.

Although freebies and gifts have left Sir Keir Starmer and his government under increased scrutiny recently, the potential future leaders of the opposition have not been able to give merch away quickly enough to draw in Tory support.

While the usual fare of pens, badges and stickers are all available, each one - Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat, Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly - has tried to beat the competition with eye-catching gimmicks.

Monday’s fashion items were the new ‘Bobby J’ baseball caps from Team Jenrick to accompany the T-shirts each team is offering to anyone who wants to take them. But the popularity of the item was nothing compared to the rush to Mr Tugendhat’s stall on Sunday.

Team Tugendhat was offering temporary tattoos and ‘Tom’s fake tan’ - which some speculated was inspired by Donald Trump - which ran out in under an hour. Less popular were lollipops featuring a photo of him - but he did bring back the previously popular M&Ms with his face on them.

Mr Tugendhat admitted that he had brought four days worth of giveaways and they were all gone before the end of Sunday. He had to send out his team to get more supplies.

The key to getting the most attention was to find the most exposed spot for individual leadership stalls.

Mr Jenrick’s stall was in the main exhibition hall next to the Margaret Thatcher Theatre - a popular spot for discussions and for members to hang out. Not far away was Mr Tugendhat’s stall, bang in the middle of the exhibition zone.

One insider suggested the positioning of the stalls said a lot about how much money each campaign was raising, with Mr Jenrick and Mr Tugendhat apparently being the biggest magnets for donors.

Ms Badenoch’s stall was positioned around a corner outside the exhibition zone.

Meanwhile, you could not get into the main parts of the conference without passing Team Cleverly’s stall, with its special wheel of fortune to find out which bit of merchandise you could walk away with.

Mr Cleverly made a special appearance at his own stall and virtually blocked up the entire conference area entrance, holding court with volunteers, journalists and basically anyone who wanted to talk to him.

Not to be outdone by Tugendhat, Team Cleverly dipped into the Taylor Swift playbook with its own friendship beads, and water bottles claiming there are “no leaks here”.

Meanwhile, Team Badenoch was giving away apples and campaign lanyards. Perhaps matching her more serious tone throughout this contest, Ms Badenoch’s stall had slightly less merchandise available than others.

The stalls also seemed to give many recently defeated former MPs a new purpose - at each one you could meet someone, grinning about their chosen candidate, who had been an honourable member.

The contest is set to go from four to two in the next fortnight, and then members will have their final choice in the run-off. While the merchandise may not truly swing votes, it does give an indication of the strength of each campaign team.

At the moment Mr Jenrick versus Ms Badenoch seems the most likely final - but Mr Tugendhat and Mr Cleverly are not to be ruled out too quickly.