Moths to a Flame

I don't know why politicians agree to appear on Desert Island Discs (DID), but they seem drawn to it like a moth to a flame - even though it gives the sketch writers a heaven sent opportunity to poke fun at their choice of music and 'back stories'. 

The latest one to try his luck is Ed Miliband who appeared on DID at the weekend and the Labour leader didn't disappoint - the newspapers were full of comment about Ed;s decision to try and make a virtue out of his 'geek boy' image.

Including this piece by Quentin Letts which appeared in Ed's least favourite newspaper, the Daily Mail. 

Castaway Ed and the most hilariously right-on Desert Island Discs ever

By QUENTIN LETTS



Ed Miliband's selection of 'Desert Island' songs on Radio 4 was so peculiar, even presenter Kirsty Young wondered if they had been chosen by his spin doctors

Ethnic minority anthem — tick. Patriotic hymn — tick. A love song to make female voters go ‘ah’ — tick. Was there maybe something a little calculating about Ed Miliband’s Desert Island Discs?

What did we learn about the Labour leader when he graced the Radio 4 programme yesterday?

Mr Miliband submitted himself for interrogation by husky presenter Kirsty Young. No Tory she. Yet his selection of songs was so peculiar, even Miss Young wondered if they had been chosen by his spin doctors.

To be a ‘castaway’ has long been a rite of passage for public figures. Pushy Jeffrey Archer chose a song called It’s Hard To Be Humble. Robert Maxwell wanted swirling Sibelius and turbulent Smetana.

Of Mr Miliband’s Labour predecessors, highbrow Michael Foot went for Rossini and Mozart. Proud Scot John Smith chose Beethoven and the tenor Kenneth McKellar. Neil Kinnock chose Brahms and a sweet recording of his daughter reading Horace The Horse.

You did not have to agree with their politics, but they were plainly rounded, serious men.

By their Desert Island Discs shall ye know them. Or not. Today’s image-makers are tinglingly alert to how choices will go down with voters. How can a politician manipulate the programme to impress electoral blocs?

Mr Miliband’s very first disc was South Africa’s national anthem. Ha! This was so nakedly right-on, so immediately, hilariously political that I actually laughed.

Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika (our Kirsty loved pronouncing that) is certainly a galvanising anthem of freedom.

I’ve never even been to South Africa, yet I come over positively Zulu when I hear that song. But do we believe it is truly one of Ed Miliband’s eight favourite records? Oh well, at least he didn’t choose The Internationale.

Lest the South African thing had made anyone think him unpatriotic, his next choice was the wildly English Jerusalem. Another corker! You almost see the mental cogs going ‘this will silence the Righties’ — those who say Europhile Ed, son of Red Ralph, is a bit unreliable in the Sceptr’d Isle department.

Rather than dwell, as a Left-wing thinker might, on the way William Blake’s words allude to mill workers in Industrial Revolution England, Mr Miliband claimed Jerusalem reminded him of going for outdoor walks with his London-lawyer wife Justine (rambler vote — tick).

Noel Coward once wrote that it was ‘extraordinary how potent cheap music is’. If only this had been true of Mr Miliband’s other choices.

Miliband's next choice of music was an Eighties disco hit, Take On Me by Norwegian technopop group A-ha (lead singer Morten Harket pictured). This was the 'I really do have a sense of humour' selection

Best of the bunch was negro-spiritualist Paul Robeson singing The Ballad of Joe Hill — a favourite of Ralph Miliband. We heard a lot about Marxist ideologue Ralph, just as we heard much about David Miliband.

Little Ed seemed to have been moulded, created, by these two bigger figures.

It was good to hear Mr Miliband admit that his father’s controversial philosophies were vital to an understanding of his, Ed’s, personality. But I had not previously appreciated the extent of the family shadow over the younger son. It was everywhere. Overwhelming.

Would-be prime ministers tend to have hinterlands of their own discovery. They tend to be influenced by their independent life-choices and by the plight of strangers. Mr Miliband’s Doncaster constituency was not mentioned once.

There was no explanation of ‘why I went into politics’. It had simply been the family trade. He had gone into it as a fishmonger’s son will inherit the gutting slab. Mind you, the inheritance normally goes to the older son. And that, of course, was not to happen with the Milibands.

Miss Young elicited fascinating silences as Ed discussed his plotting against his sibling. He kept his intention to stand for the Labour leadership pretty well hidden from David

Ralph was such an egghead that when he cooked for his sons, he did not understand that he was meant to warm up the bottled pasta sauce. Politics, politics: the Miliband boys were raised to argue with visiting Hampstead chinstrokers.

‘It wasn’t Das Kapital over the breakfast table,’ claimed Mr Miliband defensively, but it did sound like that. He insisted that as a boy he had sometimes sloped off to watch Dallas on telly. And then probably went and wrote a New Statesman critique of American cultural imperialism.

His next choice of music was an Eighties disco hit, Take On Me by Norwegian technopop group A-ha. Aiee. This was the ‘I really do have a sense of humour’ selection. He recalled going to a school disco in white trousers and purple pullover — ‘No wonder I didn’t pull.’

Miss Young extracted confirmation that he had ‘not had a serious girlfriend’ until he left university.

Poor Ed. Clement Attlee never had to put up with being asked when he lost his cherry.

Attlee never did Desert Island Discs, but former Home Secretary Jack Straw did. He chose some Telemann’s trumpet concerto and a Comfort Ye My People from the Messiah. The late Robin Cook, with a characterstic flourish, wanted Khachaturian’s Spartacus and Keith Jarrett’s I Love You, Porgy.

David Blunkett requested some Joe Cocker, some Elvis and some Delius.

Alongside such figures, the likes of A-ha don’t half look a little juvenile. Then we reverted to the Greek tragedy of fraternal rivalry. In the Bible, David slays Goliath. In the Miliband family, David was done in by his kid bruvver.

Miss Young elicited fascinating silences as Ed discussed his plotting against his sibling. He kept his intention to stand for the Labour leadership pretty well hidden from David.

‘We didn’t have a sort of total heart-to-heart about it,’ he said. Note that ‘sort of’. It’s called a checking mechanism and it suggests he knows he was treacherous.

Miss Young: ‘Is David still your best friend?’ Mr Miliband, stickily: ‘Yerrrs. But it’s been tough.’ He had ‘possibly’ underestimated the impact of his candidacy on David. The family wounds were not yet healed.

A little on the light side: For a luxury Ed chose takeaway curry - thus ticking the box marked 'Asian voter'. For a book he chose Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

For it had been David who was first to study politics at Oxford, David who was first into Cabinet, and big, surrogate-father David who had telephoned Ed to say Dad was dying in hospital.

This was the one time in Ed’s life when he had prayed. As he made this disclosure of his atheism, he again gave a little checking cough. Miss Young might have probed a little further.

If Ralph had lived, would Ed have become a believer? How closely has he ever considered religion? Given the Milibands’ strong Jewish identity - the family suffered terribly for that in the war - it seems a pity Judaism is not big in his life.

Perhaps he will grow into it. He’s only 43, and, as we saw yesterday, a strangely undeveloped 43 at that.

For were his records not on the adolescent side? Were they not shallow, musically unlayered, for such a child of intellectual privilege?

Mr Miliband also chose Josh Ritter's Change Of Time and Robbie Williams's Angels. He chose the latter because it was played at the Live 8 concert in 2005

He chose Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond because it was played at Boston Red Sox baseball matches he watched while living there.

Neil Diamond is a decent enough crooner but Sweet Caroline is not exactly the Ring Cycle, is it?

It’s not on the level of Schumann lieder or Swan Lake or an Elgar cello concerto or even Bruce Springsteen, which Tony Blair chose when he went on Desert Island Discs. What sort of man emerges from a proud Jewish-European background without a love of at least some great classical music?

Mr Miliband’s next choices were Josh Ritter’s Change Of Time and Robbie Williams’s Angels. He chose the latter because it was played at the Live 8 concert in 2005.

He was there with Justine, the girl he would eventually marry. Laydees, that disc was for you. It said ‘I can be romantic’.

But he can be cold, too. His final selection was Edith Piaf’s Je Ne Regrette Rien. Hard cheese, David. To claim, as he did yesterday, that ‘my family mean everything to me’, and then to choose that record after wrecking his brother’s dream, takes an icy soul.

Castaways are allowed to choose a luxury item and a book (in addition to the Bible, though that would not have been of much interest to secularist Miliband).

For a luxury he chose takeaway curry — thus ticking the box marked ‘Asian voter’. For a book he chose Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Again, this seems a touch on the light side.

But maybe we should not over-analyse. Desert Island Discs is a parlour game, a bit of fun. Maybe, as far as music is concerned, Ed is tone deaf.

However, by the end of yesterday’s programme, fair or not, I felt a clammy grip round my windpipe.

Ed Miliband may be good at political scheming, but it is not easy to identify his heart.