The Tory answer to Momentum just expired after two whole embarrassing months

The Activate logo on its Facebook page


Support us and go ad-free

Activate, the Conservative Party’s answer to Momentum, has shut down less than two months after its official launch party and ten months after it first appeared on social media.

But let’s not let our anguish tarnish its legacy. Let’s remember the good times.

Gone but not forgotten

Activate was set up to achieve an almost impossible goal: to “engage young people with conservatism”. Some may say, like Boris Johnson’s principles, it was doomed from the start. The group was eventually deactivated due to key members not having time to run it, with others also citing the “stigma” it had developed.

As one Twitter user put it:

The first tweet

It’s safe to say that Activate did not get off to the best of starts. Here is its first tweet:

The reaction was not overly encouraging:

However, the real hilarity wasn’t in the group’s shoddy meme skills. It was the fact that they inadvertently created an advert for Jeremy Corbyn:

The launch party

Despite repeated gaffes and controversies, Activate soldiered blindly on like Katie Hopkins in a k-hole. In April 2018, it held its official launch party in Whitechapel, East London.

However, an undercover Vice journalist snaffled a ticket and reported back on some bleak scenes:

Despite the best efforts of Activate’s digital marketing meme machine, only 28 people turned up to the launch event, including four Tory councillors, two undercover reporters and two women under the age of 50. The group had booked a room for 150 people, so attendees congregated awkwardly around the free prosecco.

He also found a movement that was completely devoid of ideas:

What I found was an organisation with under 1,000 members, focused on personal career development and social media marketing rather than grassroots activism or discussing which policies might make the world better.

Activate attempted to dispute Vice’s claims. The director of campaigning, Sam Ancliff, emailed Vice arguing that there were 36 people present at the meeting rather than 28.

No laughing matter

Joviality aside, Activate also demonstrated some chilling views.

Its membership director, Fizarn Adris, tweeted abuse to Grenfell survivors and Diane Abbott. And a leak of an Activate WhatsApp chat showed young Tories talking about “shooting peasants” and “gassing chavs”:

Activate attempted to distance themselves from these allegations, claiming the posts “did not originate from Activate or any of our members”. But messages seen by The Canary proved this to be untrue.

An uphill struggle

Activate’s task, to generate support among young people for an economic order that is actively working against them, was always going to be a tall order. But it took real skill to fail quite as spectacularly as it did.

Still, thanks for the memories guys.

Get Involved!

– Support The Canary so we can keep holding the powerful to account.

Featured image via OwenJones/YouTube

Support us and go ad-free

We need your help to keep speaking the truth

Every story that you have come to us with; each injustice you have asked us to investigate; every campaign we have fought; each of your unheard voices we amplified; we do this for you. We are making a difference on your behalf.

Our fight is your fight. You’ve supported our collective struggle every time you gave us a like; and every time you shared our work across social media. Now we need you to support us with a monthly donation.

We have published nearly 2,000 articles and over 50 films in 2021. And we want to do this and more in 2022 but we don’t have enough money to go on at this pace. So, if you value our work and want us to continue then please join us and be part of The Canary family.

In return, you get:

* Advert free reading experience
* Quarterly group video call with the Editor-in-Chief
* Behind the scenes monthly e-newsletter
* 20% discount in our shop

Almost all of our spending goes to the people who make The Canary’s content. So your contribution directly supports our writers and enables us to continue to do what we do: speaking truth, powered by you. We have weathered many attempts to shut us down and silence our vital opposition to an increasingly fascist government and right-wing mainstream media.

With your help we can continue:

* Holding political and state power to account
* Advocating for the people the system marginalises
* Being a media outlet that upholds the highest standards
* Campaigning on the issues others won’t
* Putting your lives central to everything we do

We are a drop of truth in an ocean of deceit. But we can’t do this without your support. So please, can you help us continue the fight?

The Canary Support us

Comments are closed

Related articles