Not all rosy in the coalition... or is it?

Just a quick round up of what's gone on in the past 48 hours:

David Davis overheard ridiculing the coalition in a bar on Thursday.

Tim Farron starts talking of the 'toxic Tories' in an interview on BBC World at One yesterday, expressing his concern about the political worth to the Lib Dems of being in the coalition.

Both parties of the coalition cabinet meet for the first time at Chequers to discuss the political strategy, including presentations on 'how to take the attack to Labour'.

The clear point to be made is that if these backbench grumblings are likely to be a regular occurance, political strategy discussions need to take place as joint sessions to make sure that both parties' leaderships are happy with the way the public image of each party is heading.

It leads me to ask, though, if there isn't a tad more to this than meets the eye. Admittedly, definitely Davis and probably Farron made their comments before any decisions had been made at Chequers, but given that most of the discussions were based on joint-presentations (Cameron/Clegg, Osborne/Alexander etc) it's not out of the realms of possibility to think that the leaderships had discussed the tone of what was going to be decided.

Is it really unrealistic, then, to ask if the fact that 2 senior backbench MPs from - 1 from each party - making gaffes on this level within 24 hours of each other was perhaps less than unintentional?

I for one am not convinced that these two events weren't unintended. Either to push the fact that there is disquiet and vindicate the decision for the cabinet or as part of an early decision by the leadership that the two parties need to continue to make clear their differences. Personally, I reckon the latter.