I don’t propose doing a single and comprehensive rundown of all the party PEBs this election, but I will pick up on bunches of them as they go [flying] past.
Alliance have had one out before the official campaign began, and it is just as slick in presentation as we have come to expect from them.
Necessarily it focuses on their one seat they have to defend. Openness and transparency, and ending double jobbing and pushing out the work of Stephen Farry and David Ford.
Very strong on the waste of money and going back to wasting money. The final line “Step forward, join Alliance” is clearly as much about continuing to build the party’s base as voting for Naomi.
The DUP have always been good a messaging in politics. Though in recent times, that’s gone missing as they’ve been forced back into the trenches over the flag issue, and parading.
But this one spends most of the front end as a text based presentation before deputy leader and leader of the DUP group at Westminster, Nigel Dodds.
Very crisp, and it should be said that it focuses in the final lines the importance of representing NI. But, lest we forget, it is very red white and blue:
The SDLP’s is also tribally inflected, starting with non incumbent Newry and Armagh candidate Justin McNulty on a local GAA pitch. But the message he uses is relatively* non sectarian.
Pitching a non incumbent into the front, is bold and uncharacteristically aggressive for the SDLP. The ‘new faces’ team theme runs from McNulty to Roisin Lynch with her ‘we shape our own futures, no one else does it for us’ line.
It also contains a much stronger anti abstentionist message Mark Durkan telling the camera that “the SDLP takes seats to support families and firms here“.
*Relative to almost every other mainstream party in Northern Ireland, with the obvious exception of Alliance, and independents like the MP for North Down.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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