No more Morecambe and Wise?

The surgeon who burst in on the PM/DPM photo op at Guy’s Hospital reminds me of another “photo op” issue being wrestled with at the top echelons of government. Nick Clegg is pondering whether those “twofer” outings – when he stands side by side with Cameron, inevitably looking pally – should be binned.

Yesterday’s outing was a little different. The Morecambe and Wise routine went ahead with the addition of Andrew Lansley playing the man with the harmonica who used to come on at the end of the shows (Arthur Tolcher was his name) – only to be met with the response: “Not now, Arthur”.

When Nick Clegg borrowed Nigel Lawson’s old line that the NHS was the nearest thing we had to a national religion, David Cameron chipped in that he’d better not go there as people might think he was having a go at the Archbishop of Canterbury.

But we may not be seeing quite so many of these duo outings in the future. It’s not just fall-out from the visit to the Nottingham Boots factory in March, when the microphone picked up Nick Clegg saying he wasn’t sure the two men would find much to argue about come the Election TV debates. It’s a deeper concern that the image creates false expectations of the Lib Dems’ influence.

Chewing over past mistakes, the Clegg team thinks that the real mistake of the Downing Street Garden love-in press conference that kicked off the coalition wasn’t the affability on display (judged necessary to bed in the idea that two parties could work together) but the impact of the sight-bite.

Senior Lib Dems think it left voters with no experience of coalition with the idea that they were looking at two equals. It didn’t convey the real balance of power – the Lib Dems having 57 MPs to the Tories’ 305. That’s 16 per cent of the votes. Their power substantially exceeds that figure and isn’t a constant across all issues…but they don’t (and, you could argue, shouldn’t) have parity.

So senior Lib Dems are wondering whether to cut right back on the Morecambe and Wise gigs or abandon them altogether.

The strategists have also decided that Nick Clegg should not do any unnecessary attention-seeking to make his peace with the voters.

Like a couple in the middle of a furious row, Lib Dems think, the voters just don’t want to talk to Nick Clegg at the moment. There’s no point sending flowers, notes or wooing for now. He must, the strategists think, get on with the job but not get in the voters’ faces more than he has to.

They hope there might be a chance of re-introducing him to the voters after the summer break…but that all depends on whether it was a rift or a divorce that took place last year.