‘I'm an anomaly here - I'm young, not white, female’: The Tory conference through the eyes of a 16-year-old supporter

• By Natalia Jorquera and Ryan Ramgobin at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham

Soutiam Goodarzi admits she is an anomaly.

She is a 16-year-old Conservative, pro-Brexit supporter from Leeds and is attending her first ever Conservative party conference.

“I quite like the events, I like what’s going on, I like the fact I can meet like-minded people here unlike where I come from which is really Labour heavy”, she tells us.

“When you look at it, I am an anomaly here - I am young, not white, I am female, but actually I do feel at home because what matters to me is the opinions of these people. Actually, I have similar opinions to these people.”

The teenager became politically active after researching former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher for a school assignment.

“It was through school and obviously it was a general election and everyone was talking about it…and I just did my own research and realised I agree with Thatcher. And that coincided with the general election and meant that I wanted to get involved with politics and wanted to push Thatcher’s message in 2017 Britain because I felt like it was missing.

So, a year on, it was a logical step for Soutiam to attend conference - to learn about the direction of the party and to see the faces she has seen on television.

“I think it’s quite important to know how genuine people are”, she explains.

“It’s all well and good sitting behind a screen, watching someone talk for an hour, but it’s another seeing them face to face and seeing if they are genuine, if they care about the country, the future of the country and that’s why I came here.”

While at conference, she has attended talks with Jeremy Hunt, Brandon Lewis and Boris Johnson - and even snapped a picture with Jacob Rees-Mogg.

She also spoke with Baroness Anne Jenkin, co-founder of Women2Win, a campaign group dedicated to getting more Conservative women elected.

In the 2017 General Election, it is estimated 73% of women voters aged 18-24 voted for Labour - a stark contrast to the 18% which voted for the Conservatives.

Baroness Jenkin told the teenager that getting young people to vote Conservative is "the holy grail".

"It's the one thing that everybody here wants to know and you'll see from all the fringe meetings that we're all anxious about it”, Baroness Jenkin explained.

Soutiam, a vocal Conservative supporter on Twitter, believes “the problem is, that it's not just young women who aren't voting Conservative, it's young men too.

“It is disproportionally women yes and I think we have to look at - who the activists that are going out - we have to see why Labour is more attractive than our party is and actually I think it's because we can't get the message out about meritocracy.”

“That’s why I joined politics so I can help push that message back onto our party and into British politics again.”