It has been an open secret in political and musical circles that David Milliband and his wife Louise adopted two children because they were unable to conceive. Mrs Milliband plays, under her maiden name, in the second violins of the London Symphony Orchestra. In the chatty corners of orchestral life, everyone knew of her personal sorrow and everyone clammed up.

Musicians, media and public officials are pretty good at keeping secrets when lives are at stake. I can think of one major problem with a prime minister’s child that never saw print and another with the wife of a well-known conductor. The decencies in these cases are almost unfailingly observed, at least in the UK.

So why did Milliband choose yesterday to go public with the tears he shed during the IVF treatment he underwent with his wife in the course of trying to have children? What public interest was served by this revelation? Why were the public decencies not preserved?

The obvious reason is that Milliband is front-running for leader of the Labour Party and wants to separate himself from the rest of the pack with a single humanising detail. That’s what politicians do: they make capital out of ordinary lives, sometimes out of their own.

I don’t like him the more for this ‘revelation’. On the contrary, I think Milliband has given too much information for no good reason. It will do him no great good, and it can only harm the conventions of decency in public life. There are some things that just don’t need to be broadcast.

Dear Mr Hill

 

I have greatly admired your doggedness in pursuing the paper trail that revealed Boris Johnson’s unflinching, partisan support for Veronica Wadley as London chair of the Arts Council. We always knew it was so, but it was good to see the proof.

What else have we learned? Not much. Most public appointments are partisan. Blair-Brown inserted trusted cronies into every cranny of the arts, not least the present chair and chief executive (notionally a non-political post) of Arts Council England. The heads of the armed forces and the Ministry of Defence are, it was announced today, resigning before the year is out because they were ‘too close’ to the last government. Many of Ken Livingstone’s senior appointments were old acquaintances not forgotten.

So why the fuss about Wadley? Because she’s a Tory and you don’t like them? I don’t like cauliflower, but I try not to go on about it, even when one is planted in the England goal. Of all the candidates for Wadley’s ill-paid post – £6,000 a year – she was in my view the best qualified.

I say this not as her former music critic (which I never was: fact-check, Mr Hill) but as her former Assistant Editor, who watched her closesly at work, clashed with her on many details of practice but few of principle, and cherished her unflagging dedication to the arts.

She will do a good job for London and the arts. If she doesn’t, you and I will be watching. But allow me to suggest, with collegial respect, that this is now a non-story. No scandal. Nothing happened. The Mayor got the woman he wanted into the job. End of.

all best

 

Norman Lebrecht  

Dear Mr Hill

 

I have greatly admired your doggedness in pursuing the paper trail that revealed Boris Johnson’s unflinching, partisan support for Veronica Wadley as London chair of the Arts Council. We always knew it was so, but it was good to see the proof.

What else have we learned? Not much. Most public appointments are partisan. Blair-Brown inserted trusted cronies into every cranny of the arts, not least the present chair and chief executive (notionally a non-political post) of Arts Council England. The heads of the armed forces and the Ministry of Defence are, it was announced today, resigning before the year is out because they were ‘too close’ to the last government. Many of Ken Livingstone’s senior appointments were old acquaintances not forgotten.

So why the fuss about Wadley? Because she’s a Tory and you don’t like them? I don’t like cauliflower, but I try not to go on about it, even when one is planted in the England goal. Of all the candidates for Wadley’s ill-paid post – £6,000 a year – she was in my view the best qualified.

I say this not as her former music critic (which I never was: fact-check, Mr Hill) but as her former Assistant Editor, who watched her closesly at work, clashed with her on many details of practice but few of principle, and cherished her unflagging dedication to the arts.

She will do a good job for London and the arts. If she doesn’t, you and I will be watching. But allow me to suggest, with collegial respect, that this is now a non-story. No scandal. Nothing happened. The Mayor got the woman he wanted into the job. End of.

all best

 

Norman Lebrecht