It was an afternoon that revealed the chasm growing at the heart of the Tory party.
As one set of senior figures set out their reasoned pitch to young voters, another “phalanx of spartans” across the road in Westminster was quoting Tennyson and demanding an immediate no-deal exit from the EU.
The first event, which took place in parliament, saw a trio of Matt Hancock, Penny Mordaunt and Tom Tugendhat set out their pitches on policy and detoxifying the Conservative brand.
Brexit was mentioned only briefly, as the they discussed winning over young voters, and looked to the next steps for the party.
Following an in-depth statistical presentation of how, where and why the Tories are going wrong, the challengers for the leadership got to work.
Hancock, while stressing that Brexit must be delivered, took a thinly veiled jibe at his party’s ultra contingent, insisting: “We’ve got to sound like we actually like this country, we have got to be patriots for Britain of now not the Britain of 1940.
“And we need to be enthusiastic about it, we need to give people reasons to be optimistic and we need to be as angry about injustice as the most ardent social media warrior.”
The health secretary also warned that “if we become only a Brexit party then we are finished”, and like others on the panel he stressed the need to focus on policies that empower and help young voters, rather than the NHS and social care monolith that many of the Tories’ older supporters rely on.
“Voting Conservative used to be something people thought about when you got your first pay check,” he said. “Now it’s something you think about when you get your first winter fuel allowance.”
Mordaunt outlined her Leaver credentials by calling Brexit a “tremendous act of hope and optimism”, but set herself aside from the partisanship displayed by the likes of MP Mark Francois and his arch-Brexiteer European Research Group colleagues.
“Those, who in my view, have shown the greatest act of patriotism over the last few years wasn’t Leave voters – it was Remain voters that accepted the result.”
She also appeared to take a swipe at Leavers’ favourite Boris Johnson, as she stressed “the age of hero politicians is now over”.
Drawing on her experience as international development secretary, she said the next prime minister needs to set long-term national missions and then get businesses and charities to “lean in” and help the government at a time when there is less money to go around.
“It would not be about hero politicians, it would be about servant leadership, that’s what this nation needs and that’s what politics needs right now,” she said.
Tugendhat, an outsider, meanwhile spoke to the Tories’ profound problem with 18-24 year-old female voters. The Commons foreign affairs committee chair identified childcare as a blindspot for the Tories, as he said the UK should look to emulate the French or Swedish systems to get more women working.
“Despite the emancipation of women over a century ago, despite women in the workforce now at the highest levels actually for many, many years... there are still fundamental problems with the way our economy treats women.
“Those fundamental problems are often to do with access to welfare and often to do with the structural discrimination that comes with childcare,” he said.
But across the road, there was a different tone, as a trio of Brexiteer Tory MPs was demanding the UK leave the EU with no-deal as soon as possible.
Taking turns to speak at a podium featuring a black-and-white photograph of Margaret Thatcher, the backbenchers addressed an audience of around 100, older, committed eurosceptics.
Theresa May’s name was heckled with cries of “traitor” within the first five minutes. While a mention of Olly Robbins, the PM’s chief Brexit negotiator, was greeted with a demand to “shoot him”.
For many, even Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg were also on the blacklist, for having decided to back the prime minister’s much-maligned Brexit deal.
Mark Francois, the deputy chairman of the ERG, warned the EU it would face “perfidious Albion on speed” if it tried to hold the UK “captive”.
“Let my people go,” he shouted, quoting Moses, via Boris.
The MP, who noted he read War Studies at university and reminded the room he was once a British Army officer, branded himself and other hardcore Brexiteers the “Spartan phalanx”. He then read a Tennyson poem.
Andrew Bridgen, another Brexiteer, complained Britain used to be “five-star” Michelin restaurant but now was willing to accept ready-meal laws microwaved in Brussels.
The North West Leicestershire MP also revealed his staff screen his tweets to prevent him saying anything that would get him in trouble. “It would appear the Maybot has has gone haywire and no one can find the off switch,” he told the room one rejected post had read, having slipped away from his aides.
Anne Marie-Morris, who was briefly suspended from the party in 2017 for using the phrase “n**** in the woodpile”, declared not only would she not campaign for the Tories at the European elections, but said she might vote for Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party.
She warned those in the room they had to play a “complex game of chess” against the Remain establishment of the Cabinet, Labour, the Speaker and the civil service.
“That lady must go,” she said of May. And lamented it was not possible to “force that dreadful woman to stand down” before next December.
Marie-Morris also encouraged pro-Brexit members to flood local Tory parties to oust local chairmen and MPs who voted for the PM’s deal. “I am astonished at the level of ignorance among my colleagues,” she said of Tory MPs who had backed the deal. “Wise fools.”
“For me, my country comes first and my party, which needs desperately rebuilding, comes second,” she added.