What better way to mark the year the Labour party surged behind its leader/imploded than with a bit of memorabilia? There is a custom at party conference to sell a load of tat with provocative and hilarious messages. There must be those who still wear their £5 striped Ukip ties from the party’s 2014 conference, or who sip morosely from a sold-out Nick Clegg mug from last year’s Lib Dem gathering. The 2013 Tory conference was a good one for Thatcher-inspired items – the “Maggie” collection featured tea towels, cufflinks and bibs reading “Iron Baby”. Sadly, the ironing-board cover was withdrawn – it proved a fire hazard. The best merch, though, can be found at Momentum’s The World Transformed event, currently running alongside the Labour party conference. Here’s what to buy the Corbynista in your life:
Poems for Jeremy Corbyn, £10
A collection of poems written by 50 poetic comrades of the Labour leader. One, by Nicholas Murray, ends rousingly: “Corbyn’s no knight in shining vest / or bright Messiah from the West / (he’d say) / but someone who has found a way to voice / a fractured country’s need for choice / to say we’ll make another kind of noise: / No way!”
Run-DMC-style T-shirts, from £15
These T-shirts, made by ethical T-shirt company THTC using organic cotton, take their inspiration from the logo of the US hip-hop group Run-DMC. Wear while considering if it would be appropriate to refer to the middle-class, middle-aged white male leader as Jam Master Jez.
Still Hate Thatcher T-shirts, £13.99
Not a fan of pioneering 80s hip-hop but definitely a fan of pioneering 80s Tory-bashing? Show your decades-long commitment with a T-shirt reading: “Still hate Thatcher”.
Anti-war mugs, £8
The artist Darren Cullen has a range of goods including mugs reading: “Make Stuff Dead”. He is also selling a “paralysed Action Man” and a spoof army recruitment advert reading “free prosthetic limbs”, which the Dail Mail has described as “highly offensive to veterans”. Cullen, who has worked with the organisation Veterans for Peace, says his work is a comment on the military’s recruitment tactics and failure to look after its servicemen and women.
