What would Nick Clegg look like sporting a Santa hat and posing with his wife under a pair of antlers festooned with holly? Wonder no more. With that image, and a strip of three others captured in a photobooth, the Lib Dem leader on Friday wished friends and supporters a merry Christmas and, no doubt, a 2015 full of considerably greater successes than the sceptics had predicted.
The Cleggs’ lighthearted Christmas card was released on the same day as those of the other two major party leaders, and for those who consider that no political greeting, festive or otherwise, is composed without some measure of calculation, there was plenty of intriguing tinsel to untangle.
The prime minister, for example, chose an image of himself and his wife standing in front of Downing Street, flanked by grinning Chelsea pensioners.
Though the retired soldiers had sadly neglected to opt for jingle bells or white beards, their scarlet coats and Samantha Cameron’s choice of a white dress gave the austere image at least a nod to festivity. Other than that, the prime minister’s message was clear: I run the country, you just try and stop me. Oh, and this lot are on my side, too.
While Cameron opted to stress his status, Ed Miliband’s choice for his own card was an everyday image of a normal dad doing ordinary Christmas things with his adorably typical family.
Regular guy Miliband, just like any other bloke you’d like to share a beer with down the pub, or indeed vote for, can be seen helping his wife, Justine Thornton, and children Daniel and Samuel prepare home-made Christmas cards for other family members.
Sharp-eyed recipients will note, however, that while the whole family have been supplied with pens and paper, it is the Labour leader who has bagged the glamorous job of sprinkling the glitter. An average dad, in other words, but also a leader. All his children can do is look on in open-mouthed wonder (or in Thornton’s case, laugh).
Lee Stewart of The Mighty Booth, the company which supplied the photobooth to the Lib Dem leader’s south London home, said Clegg and his wife, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, had selected the “Sherlock” from his range of modified German kiosks, which comes with vintage lighting, a brass porthole, antlers and an oak-panelled interior.
“I set it up, but it’s fully automatic. I shut the curtain and let them play for half an hour; all I heard was laughter,” Stewart told the Guardian. “When they came out they said they had got what they wanted.”
Earlier this week, Ukip released the design selected to feature on the cards of its leader Nigel Farage, which showed a white van driving over the flattened bodies of the three major party leaders.
The image, by the Daily Telegraph cartoonist Christian Adams, is a gleeful reference to the photograph of a house adorned by St George flags and with a white van outside which was tweeted by Labour’s Emily Thornberry during the Rochester and Strood by-election. Quite why the driver of the van is sitting on the left hand side, however, is not explained. Surely it’s not an imported European white van?
Unhelpfully for Ukip, however, the cartoonist pointed out on his own Twitter feed that the party had not asked his permission, though he later said it appeared to have been a genuine mistake.
A party spokesman said the matter had now been straightened out with the Telegraph’s syndication department. It is the season of goodwill to all people, after all.
