If I were Louise Shackleton, otherwise known as Mrs David Miliband, I would be utterly infuriated by a somewhat tabloidesque article which was published in yesterday morning's Telegraph but reads as rather more worthy of the Daily Mail. The sensationalist account of Ed Miliband's leadership victory at the Labour Party Conference was penned by two members of the broadsheet's political reporting team, who must have been hiding in the Milibands' ensuite bathroom with a glass pressed to the door as the defeated elder brother and his wife enjoyed a rare lie-in on Sunday morning following the announcement of Saturday's incredibly close result. Miliband Minor, the new leader of the Labour party, was interviewed by Andrew Marr on the top floor of the Manchester Hilton whilst Ms Shackleton, apparently, lay in bed next to her husband and "seethed" in the privacy of their downgraded suite "at what she saw as Ed's betrayal of his sibling". Later in the article, we are informed that she "could not hide her disgust" when the results of the contest were announced in public late on Saturday afternoon at the party conference. The Telegraph has also printed a charmingly unflattering photo of her scowling alongside her husband, captioning it with a reference to today's Daily Mail article which claims she is "furious" with Ed. For all we know, she's just seen someone allowing their dog to foul the pavement and is pursing her lips in disapproval, as indeed I would do in the same circumstances. But the subtext is clear: David Miliband's wife hates her brother-in-law, and here's a photo to prove it!
Elsewhere, over in the real world, Mrs Miliband has been spotted walking hand-in-hand with her husband between their hotel and the conference venue, smiling in a relaxed and dignified manner when her husband is approached by the stampeding media and even laughing with him during the rare moments when the pair are allowed any respite from the constant questioning to which they have been subjected since David lost the leadership election by just 1.3%. Obsessed as the press are with politicians' wives, it seems they cannot cope with the notion that very little is known about Louise Shackleton other than that she is American, the mother of two adopted sons, and a professional concert violinist with the London Symphony Orchestra who met her husband on a plane, so in order to maintain the public's interest in this media-fuelled Miliband-themed soap opera we have been presented with a couple of fabricated snippets dressed up as fact. Presumably they can't write anything more juicy for fear of the consequences of printing actual lies, but those two little sentences about the Shadow Foreign Secretary's wife are surely designed to plant more seeds in the minds of those who are eager to believe that beneath the public displays of warm brotherly love and mutual admiration there lurks an ever-widening political and filial chasm between David and Ed Miliband.
If you watch the BBC coverage, and I've watched a great deal of it over the past few days, you may have noticed the commentators striving amusingly to present a particular version of events every time a Miliband comes into view, either in the conference hall or out in the rainy piazza where Laura Kuenssberg has been standing all day clutching her microphone in the hope that one of them might drop just a tiny hint regarding David's much-debated future in the shadow cabinet. Since the moment all five candidates walked into the conference room for the results of the election, "body-language experts" and political pundits were confidently predicting the outcome based mostly upon the Milibands' respective facial expressions. David entered wearing "a confident grin" whilst Ed looked "rather ashen-faced", according to the BBC live news feed, which was hastily updated to "ashen-faced with the shock of victory" moments later. Certainly their demeanours confused almost everyone, including MPs who know the pair well and were perhaps expecting a different result given that slightly more of them supported David than the ultimately victorious Ed. I was also completely taken in, and agree wholeheartedly with the Tweeter who said he would never play poker with the Milibands. But, with hindsight, each brother's reaction to the news that the younger one had won makes me more admiring of them than I was previously and leads me to believe that, if David does take up a senior position in the Shadow Cabinet, the pair of them are capable of doing more for both party unity and the appearance of party unity than anyone else has in a long time, as long as the media doesn't provide us with cyncial subtext every time the older Miliband opens his mouth in public. David's smile in the conference hall was not just confident, it was genuine and sincere, despite what has been written since about its failure to reach his eyes. Whether or not he was smiling through gritted teeth, it did not come across in that way. He was the first to rise to his feet in congratulation of his brother, to whom he then offered a warm embrace before Ed stepped up to the podium to accept his new position. His comments afterwards, when approached by the media scrum, were entirely appropriate; he spoke of it being his brother's day, and refused to be drawn on whether he would take a role in the Shadow Cabinet, saying that the conference and the new leader's victory, rather than his defeat and political future, must take priority. And again, as soon as he had moved on, we were treated to an attempt by the BBC to distract us from the fact that there was really nothing new to say, beyond "Ed Miliband won the leadership contest by a very narrow margin, and it is not yet known whether or not his brother will take a job working under him, or what that job might be." That is, at this moment, all there is to know, or rather all the Milibands wish us to know just now. They are both absolutely right not to release any tantalising nuggets of information at this stage, because there has been no time to decide anything yet and, anyway, any small thing of interest that they say will be seized upon immediately, analysed and quoted endlessly until more information is provided. Irrespective of this sensible decision, the BBC's political correspondent (who has managed to get next to no information out of either Miliband so far, though not for the want of trying) has mused all day on the subject of how very hard it must be for David Miliband to have lost to his brother, as evidenced by the "cracking of his voice", which clearly shows how difficult he is finding all this. He has been described as "obviously torn" about his future in the Shadow Cabinet, when in actual fact all he has said, perfectly brightly and without evidence of being particularly upset, is that it is a discussion to have another time, once the conference is over. I suspect that he and Ed have already decided exactly what his new role will (or will not) be in the Labour Party (they are, after all, well aware of each other's policies and priorities, and will certainly have prepared for the fact that only one of them could win and that the other would lose), and that they are wisely refraining from confirming that any decision has been made, let alone what that decision is, for the very good reasons that a) it will detract completely from the important issues to be discussed at the party conference, and b) it is no more important in the grand scheme of things than which position any of the other four leadership candidates might assume, apart from the fact that David is seen as a tremendous talent and asset to the party. His conference speech this morning was sincere and upbeat, prefaced with references to how incredibly proud he is of his brother and emphasising the need for absolute unity within the party. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest any "psycho-drama" or division between the brothers, who both went to great lengths during their leadership campaigns to stress that their brotherly love would survive whatever the outcome, despite having stood against each other. Their graciousness and apparent humility during what must have been a challenging couple of days for both of them should only serve to impress those who support the Labour party, and should not be undermined by suggestions in the media that the pair are at war with one another unless there is definite evidence that this is the case.
I am not suggesting that the BBC, or any other news broadcaster, should refrain from trying to glean as many details as possible as quickly as they can, since the Labour party reshuffle is clearly of interest and great significance to many. But I do think that the media's increasingly common habit of essentially making things up under the guise of speculating and trying to read more into a situation than is ready for public consumption constitues arrogant and misleading journalism. No doubt it sells more papers and encourages higher viewing figures than the reality might, but it simply means that the public needs to second-guess the second-guessing rather than take seriously anything much that is suggested by those who are obliged to provide 24-hour coverage and, furthermore, to keep it interesting for the viewing public. "Nothing to report yet" is not a fraction as fascinating as it is to look for double meanings when David Miliband says "I'm just on my way out!" to the journalists who are literally chasing him, or to count the number of times the brothers banged each other on the back whilst embracing and interpreting it as a signal that both were keen to escape from the other as quickly as possible, or - hilariously - scrutinising Ed's choice of tie in the hope of gleaning policy clues based on random sartorial decisions, but it might actually be accurate, which is more than can be said for some of what has been written and said over the past few days.
It would be naive to imagine that the last 72 hours have been easy for David and Louise Miliband, or indeed for the new Labour leader who stood against his brother and triumphed largely because of support from the unions. But it would be even more naive to accept as truth, and in some cases anything remotely connected with truth, everything that is said in the media over the next crucial hours and days. Labour supporters should listen to what both Milibands have to say during the remainder of the conference and in the week afterwards, and make a fair and balanced judgement within the proper context rather than racing prematurely to conclusions which may turn out to be quite wrong. By 9pm on Monday, there were no more facts available regarding David Miliband's future than there had been at 9am. The news headlines remained virtually identical all day. Yet endless contributions were put forward constantly, all by people indulging in nothing more than guesswork, albeit educated guesswork. This morning a predictable stream of new articles have appeared, one written by an old university friend of David's who can't tell the difference between the violin and the cello, and others who are analysing every tiny detail of the Leader's Speech and reactions to it. This is undoubtedly fascinating, but given the heavy Tory bias of the media, the majority is going to be a long way from objective. At this precise moment of writing, both the Telegraph and the BBC are predicting that David Miliband is on his way out of British politics - something which will be confirmed one way or the other tomorrow, and not before. Yes, he may disagree with his brother on various aspects of policy, but so will anyone appointed to the new Shadow Cabinet to some degree, and he has given no indication whatsoever so far as to which way he will jump - meaning that anything we hear or read on the subject, irrespective of how educated and politically aware the commentator, is pure speculation. Mrs Miliband may have been witnessed in tears during her husband's speech yesterday, but that does not mean the pair of them are plotting Ed's downfall. So, rather than paying serious attention to anything much that Murdoch's media have to say at present, let's just wait and see, and allow the new Opposition to re-establish itself without having to put up with imposed smokescreens created by the rumourmill. Hearsay and supposition does not allow the electorate to make a sensible decision about which party to support, which is after all the important thing. And never trust an unnamed source!
