What Cameron and Osborne's rare joint appearance tells us about their relationship

David Cameron and George Osborne managed to garner more attention for their infrastructure announcement (or re-announcement) today by organising their first joint appearance alone together in four years – and making sure the media were aware that this was the case. The pair haven’t appeared together in public for a while partly because they fear doing so would suggest to voters that the government was run by two chaps from very similar backgrounds; better to dilute it by pitching up with other ministers, hopefully with vaguely different backstories.

But it is also quite impressive that the two men haven’t felt the need to do these joint appearances after questions about splits between them. That’s because those questions rarely arise, and when they do, they’re rarely valid. They have differed over policies including tax breaks for married couples, but never resorted to briefing wars.