At the Tory conference in Birmingham this week there is a large crowd of young people the likes of whom are rarely spotted. In a central hotel one suited bunch could be seen studiously avoiding eye contact with a group of rowdy cheerleaders of around the same age. Another could be seen striding sober and immaculate through the city centre at 1am, singing ABBA songs together.

These are the young Tories, a group that has become increasingly important to the party. Rattled by Labour’s large and vibrant youth wing, conservatives have made great efforts to attract young people, hoping for a Momentum-like movement to inject energy into the party and inspire young voters. And in a newspaper interview on Sunday Theresa May suggested this had worked. “Conference will look different. You will see a lot more younger people,” she said.

Well, she is half right. There are more younger Tories around this year, but they blend in perfectly: conference does not look different. Neither is there much sense of a budding movement. Attempts to whip one up – such as the recent youth campaign “Activate” – have tended to end quickly, and in embarrassment. Can the Conservatives still hope for a youth movement?

There are broadly three tribes of young Tories.

Moggmentum

The tribe whose representatives spent a good hour of Monday queuing to get into a Birmingham Novotel to see Jacob Rees-Mogg speak. This bunch will trample over each other to get a selfie with their hero, and boast proudly of having hosted him at their student unions. They also have the most recognisable dress sense: bow ties, signet rings, three-piece suits. One shows me the label inside his tie. It reads, “Donald J Trump. Signature Collection”.

The “Uber-riding, Airbnb-ing, Deliveroo-eating” lot

So called by the Treasury secretary, Liz Truss, these stand out in the conference hall for occasionally omitting to wear a suit, or, when they do, sometimes leaving off the tie. They are the libertarians, to be found at events run by the rightwing thinktanks Taxpayers’ Alliance or Adam Smith Institute, talking passionately about free markets and deregulation. One such youngster, queuing to see Dominic Raab in conversation, could be seen wearing a tweed hat decorated with buttons calling, variously, for anarchy, “Chuck Chequers”, and cannabis decriminalisation.

The pragmatic party-orientated tribe

A mix of careerists and loyal foot-soldiers, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, has the largest female contingent. These are the people whose Twitter bios might sport an #I’mwithMay or a #bloodydifficultwoman (a sign of party loyalty, one tells me: they don’t necessarily like the prime minister). Some confide they are remainers, but have stayed with the party anyway. “I’ve found it difficult, but the party should be a broad church,” says one.

Then, too, there are the very young, yet to identify their tribe. These are not hard to spot, because they are pointed out affectionately by all the others. “Ah there’s a first timer there in that pinstripe suit, I remember those days,” one says. “You can tell who’s a newbie because they’ll tell you they are head of their university association, and they’ll have an entourage.” Newbies also spend a lot of time “celeb” spotting in the main hall. Obscure backbenchers are mobbed for pictures and go off smiling. As I pass the rightwing journalist James Delingpole in the hall, he is tentatively asked for a selfie by three youngsters. And for “proper” stars, such as Liam Fox, it is not rare to see a queue of eager selfie hunters nearby, politely waiting for him to get to them.

The older crowd are slightly scornful of this behaviour. “This is never what we came to do,” says one 25-year-old veteran. “We’d take a picture with someone we liked, but not everyone.” Another oldie attempts to explain the phenomenon: “Imagine a 16-year-old’s bedroom wall – but instead of pop stars or actors there will be politicians. Liam Fox is their version of Tom Hardy.” Meanwhile, the selfie madness among the novices reached such a peak on Sunday that even the leftwing Guardian writer Owen Jones found himself surrounded. And when Channel 4 journalist Jon Snow prepared to go live outside the conference centre on Monday evening, a row of young Tories could faintly be seen beyond him in the dusk, their watching faces glowing white under the lights.

These tribes of young people, with their shy hero worship and their pragmatism, cannot be described as a youth movement. They are not like Momentum, they are like older Tories: they dress like them, join the party for similar reasons, and conduct themselves quietly within its structures, often hoping to move up. Unlike Momentum, too, they are not factional – the different groups mix well, says Mahyar Tousi, political video blogger and former member of the Young Tories National Executive, which is nice but “tends to take away radical energy”.

In fact they are not likely to inject energy of any kind into the party. “On the left people are more vocal, they protest. We’d write a letter, or do it through networking,” says one York University student, who became a Tory at 14. And for others, the very word “young” makes them wince. “I’m concerned about the idea of ‘young Conservatives’ – it could be dangerous, it inflates us beyond our station,” says another recent graduate.

This is not the basis for a Tory Momentum. It might be that Conservatives – young and old – are simply too conservative for this sort of thing. They are certainly as far, temperamentally, from Labour’s Momentum as it is possible to be. No, if the Tories want to attract young voters, it might be that they will have to do it the old-fashioned way: through policies that appeal to them. The party’s conference would be a good time to set out some of those.

• Martha Gill is a freelance political journalist and former lobby correspondent