Disastrous ‘Tory Momentum’ finally bites dust – but what a ride while it lasted

The Tory attempt to create – which shows how badly they missed the point – their own version of Labour-supporting movement Momentum has been a source of hilarity ever since its ill-conceived beginnings.

Activate became (in)famous for anything but being a vibrant political movement, with a series of blunders and arrogance such as:

• selling hugely-expensive bottles of champagne signed by Tory ‘celebrities’
• vast membership fees – later slashed
• terrible – terrible – memes
• vacating its original Twitter handle without preventing it being taken over by a spoof account – which Activate still pointed to from its website
• an astonishing gaffe in which it gave control of its social media accounts to an undercover reporter – and paid for it with enormous humiliation: tweets in Russian; a ‘turf war’ between ‘rival’ Facebook and Twitter accounts; the denouncing of Activate’s spokesman by the ‘official’ account while he was live on BBC radio and oh so much more
• log-in mix-ups that showed the Activate team were also operating a ‘new’ social media account in the hope of diverting from the humiliation of the Activate brand
• vicious in-fighting over leaks to media
• vile homophobic WhatsApp conversations

The group recently tried to ‘relaunch’, with an expensive champagne evening that attracted only thirty or so people – including staff and journalists. But although Activate’s spokespeople tried to bluster their way through the ongoing disaster, it appears that the project is finally, belatedly dead.

A visit to the Activate website returns a ‘404’ error – while the group’s (later) Twitter account now shows only a single tweet under a revised description of ‘The artist formerly known as’:

Comment:

The departing tweet might be the nearest to a successful social media message the group – or the Tories as a whole – have ever managed. Presumably the Tories have decided to put their money into more ‘bots’ and paid trolls instead.

But while it lasted, it provided both a fount of amusement and an object lesson in why Tories can’t do social media, let alone inspire a movement.

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