HOW many General Election campaign launches can one party hold?
That’s not a trick question, or at least, it shouldn’t be. But the political parties across the UK seem to have decided that the answer is not the obvious "one".
Instead, they’re just merrily holding as many as they like. After all, how better to guarantee press attention than a “campaign launch”? The media would be remiss not to cover an event like that.
Labour have proven adept at milking it. Not content with a general General Election campaign launch, the party have also held separate ones in Scotland and Wales.
And that’s without even mentioning all the election year launches that happened back in January.
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In fact, the SNP are guilty too. If you can remember back to the start of the year, Humza Yousaf held a General Election campaign launch, pledging to make Scotland “Tory-free”.
Of course, it was only fair that John Swinney got to hold his own after the vote had actually been called.
Reform UK took a similar tack. They held their General Election campaign launch in May under Richard Tice, who the party had tried to convince voters was actually their leader.
Then, when Reform's real leader Nigel Farage publicly took the title, they jolly well held another one.
But while some jumped the gun early, others have left it arguably a little late.
On Friday, Alex Salmond was in Glasgow for Alba’s election campaign launch – while the SNP, Greens, and LibDems all held their own events in the city.
Alba’s launch went as you’d expect one to go: candidates were introduced, key policies outlined, leaders made speeches.
The Greens also unveiled their candidates, announcing a record slate of 44 – a number which was spoken of admiringly by some political reporters and greeted with a little confusion by others (“where are they getting the money from?”).
But don’t be fooled.
Despite unveiling all their candidates, the Greens haven’t launched their General Election campaign yet. That’s happening next week.
And we still have basically every party's General Election manifesto launch to look forward to.
If it’s all starting to sound a little repetitive, that’s because it is.
But put yourself in the shoes of a political adviser, keen to get your party’s candidates some precious space in the news. How could you guarantee coverage? After all, it’s very hard to come up with something newsworthy to say every day.
So, what better way than holding a nice launch event?
Who cares if you’ve already had one.
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