A local political party in The Hague has had to take down an election video in the style of a James Bond title sequence after being contacted by lawyers.

Richard de Mos, leader of the Hart voor Den Haag/Groep de Mos, told DutchNews.nl that he had removed a clip that gained national publicity from YouTube, after complaints on behalf of Sony.

People who retweeted the video are understood to have been asked to take down their tweets by the London-based IFPI, which represents licensed content, and it has also disappeared from Dutch media reports. Various tweets now read: ‘This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.’

‘It was of course a parody, presenting our candidates with a nod and a wink in our little James Bond clip,’ said De Mos. ‘Sony also thought it was cute, and had a good laugh…but they said: it needs to come down now.

‘We did this after their request – it was all quite light, and there’s no problem any more.’

Dit is echt pic.twitter.com/IF1YRQVajZ

— Paul Peeters (@palpeet) January 17, 2022

He said that he did not consider the clip, in which former government minister Rita Verdonk played an indomitable ‘Bond girl’, a gross infringement of copyright. It did, however, use the music from a recent Bond film. ‘We are a small, local party, and we did this to present our candidates in a lighthearted way… and Sony saw that as well,’ he explained.

The party is understood to have received a letter on behalf of Sony Music Entertainment, owner of the soundtrack The Name’s Bond…James Bond (Album Version), at the end of January asking them to take the video down from YouTube. It apparently immediately complied.

De Mos said that after the huge media coverage of the clip, the party was now well and truly introduced to the country in any case. ‘It proved to be newsworthy, our candidates are now well known and we are going ahead with other playful ideas for the campaign,’ he added.

‘We’ve presented two campaign songs for The Hague voters to choose from, we have bought an old city bus and painted it green and yellow for our campaign, and we are planning lots of action to put our party in the spotlight…but we won’t make it too James Bond.’

DutchNews.nl has contacted IFPI for a comment.