By his own admission it “doesn’t look great”, but voters can make their own minds up.

An election leaflet from Conservative parliamentary candidate for East Ham, Samir Jassal, encouraged residents to vote for “Name Surname” at the polls in an unfortunate blunder.

The property development boss pointed to a printing error to explain the mistake, sent out to 43,000 households this week.

“As far as we are concerned it was accurate when we sent it off to the printers,” he told the Recorder.

“Fifteen days before a general election it doesn’t look great, it’s an easy goal to score against me but to be honest my focus is on the campaigning.”

He added: “There’s very little that I can do about it. For those who feel aggrieved by it I apologise. My focus is really doing what I’m doing which is going around the borough, meeting the residents and asking what issues affect them.”

The error was picked up by former East Ham MP Stephen Timms, who is campaigning for re-election this May 7, who wrote on Twitter: “My Tory opponent’s leaflet reads: “For a strong and effective MP who will be accountable to you, vote Name Surname on 7th May”.

He also retweeted a comment by Twitter user ProfCopusLG [sic] which read: “Unusual name to have but must be handy for filling in forms.”

Mr Jassal has yet to confirm which company was used to print the leaflet.