Telegraph’s Junior Doctor IS TORY ACTIVIST

As Zelo Street regulars may recall, last year the increasingly downmarket and desperate Telegraph paraded before its readers a junior doctor who was in favour of the new contract being imposed on the profession by Jeremy Hunt (the former Culture Secretary), only for this blog to point out that Adam Dalby had never actually practised medicine. He was in his foundation year, and was yet to find work in the NHS or elsewhere.

But he wasn't, was he, media people?

Undeterred by this revelation, Dalby then wangled a double-page spread for the Daily Mail, which by the most fortunate of coincidence told readers exactly what the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre wanted them to hear: that the BMA was a hotbed of militancy, that the contract before junior doctors was wonderful, and that the only people who thought otherwise were Rotten Lefties (tm) in hock to Jeremy Corbyn.

It gets worse: Dalby also likes to Retweet the smears of the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, including the recent hit-jobs on Labour’s representative for Kensington, Emma Dent Coad. Somehow, the smearing of Ms Dent Coad happening at the same time as a report into the Grenfell Tower disaster evaded Dalby. He is also a prolific Tweeter of other Labour smearers.

So it is not unusual to see attacks on the likes of John McDonnell and Diane Abbott turning up in his Twitter feed. What should also not be a surprise, then, is that Adam Dalby is not a mere Labour basher or right-leaning sympathiser, but a Tory activist to boot. Moreover, he is no mere ordinary Tory Party member: this not-really-very-experienced Junior Doctor has been unveiled as the new policy director for Activate.

This is the body which likes to style itself as the “Tory Momentum”, and whose Twitter bio talks of “An independent organisation creating a united platform for young conservatives and returning power to the grassroots”, although the Twitter feed, far from campaigning on grassroots issues, merely recycles CCHQ propaganda, Retweets Tory MPs (especially those on the right), and echoes the smears of The Great Guido.

Sadly, Activate has not enjoyed a happy genesis: it got off to a difficult start, after its WhatsApp group was rumbled: “A young Tory campaign group has apologised after members posted sick messages about ‘chavs’ in a Whatsapp group … Vile messages sent in an ‘Activate’ group say things like ‘gas them all’ in relation to the working class stereotype of ‘chavs’” told free sheet Metro. And now a non-doctor has joined them.

The organisation which not only had its Twitter feed hacked, but was ridiculed for, as the Guardian pointed out, “The group’s use of multiple hashtags and a meme that was last popular in the early 2000s led to widespread derision on the social network”. Now, it seems the Tories’ idea of being down with Da Kidz is to bring on board someone who claimed to be a Junior Doctor, but was then found not to be.

Anyone would think the Tories don’t understand those under, er, rather more than 21 years of age. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.