QUENTIN LETTS: Conservative conference was surprisingly upbeat

Just watching this Tory leadership contest is exhausting. One dreads to think how knackering it must be for the four contenders. Look, there's James 'Mr Push-Ups' Cleverly and his wife posing for selfies on the conference hall stairs.

There's Robert Jenrick and his entourage of boxy-suited lads marching off to another TV interview.

There's Lieut-Col Tugendhat, all glottal-stoppy and basically saying 'can't tell you too much about me time as security minister or I'll have to strangle yer, laddie – the King's secrets are safe with me!'

And there's Kemi Badenoch at a women's fringe event talking about sex education and going into eye-popping terminology that, if reported here, would see marmalade pots dropping on kitchenette floors across the kingdom.

Every hour, every day, incessant fringe meetings, media hits, hall auditions, walkabouts, social-media clips, strategy huddles.

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Lord knows when the four would-be leaders find time for their morning constitutionals, let alone doing the crossword.

For day two of conference the place was surprisingly full and the mood weirdly upbeat for a party just given a pasting in the general election.

It feels more pepped-up than last year's conference when doe-eyed Rishi was in charge. This year no one's in charge. Hooray.

Liz Truss did a lunchtime fringe. Suicide bomber Truss. You might think they'd avoid her like the pox.

The 300-seater theatre was packed. She spent much of the event attacking the governor of the Bank of England and came close to admitting that her family thought she was nuts.

She recounted how when she and her husband were in No10 they had nothing to eat because the Sainsbury's delivery people thought the order was a wind-up. Young Jenrick had been first out of the traps at breakfast-time, bouncing into the Birmingham Rep theatre to deliver a breathless denunciation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

To encourage attendance they handed out enormous beefburgers.

I saw one hung-over lad, circa 18 stone, make a frightful mess of his.

It was like watching a muckspreader at work. Then he went back for a second.

Mr Jenrick's campaign has such an American flavour, it's a surprise he isn't calling himself Robert E. Jenrick, or Robert Jenrick Jnr. 'Team Jenrick' is dishing out baseball caps saying 'We Want Bobby J'.

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That is, cough, a little awkward because in youth circles a Bobby J is apparently slang for something v. rude.

Buzz-cut Bobby J gave a demotic performance sans autocue. He waggled his right forefinger in the air.

It was long and hypnotically bendy. Almost wherever he goes he is accompanied, like Mr Cleverly, by his wife. Mrs Jenrick is American, high-powered and has a handshake that could crack a walnut.

On we surged. Agent Tugendhat (he denied having been a spy but said he was uniformed military intelligence) underwent interrogation in the conference hall after lunch.

He and Kemi both did this; the other two will be quizzed today. Each session lasts an hour. Far too long.

Mr Tugendhat wore thick green Army socks and he soon reaped the consequences: his ears went pink and he was sweating.

'I won't hold against anyone their inexperience in combat,' he barked, effectively dissing his rivals as battle-shy civilians.

Mr Cleverly, who has served with the Royal Artillery, might chew his lip a little at that.

In front of a packed 1,500-seater hall, Mr Tugendhat presented himself as markedly more right-wing than Westminster regulars would necessarily recognise.

There was some Tiger Nidgett stuff about 'leadership' but he also remembered to accentuate his modernity, claiming 'I can change a nappy while doing an interview on Radio 4'.

Mrs Badenoch, for her part, dressed to the centre. If Tom resembled a pink-eared schoolboy – his posture was not good – she was quite grand, sitting side-saddle in her chair and coming across as more grown-up than the caricature of her as a culture-wars troublemaker.

'We need to be noisier,' she said, 'but not just making noise. Also making sense.'