Funny one this one. Foreign Secretary David Miliband goes on paternity leave the minute King Abdullah hits town. Some people, not least Sky News’ Adam Boulton and The Guardian’s Michael White, drop broad hints of alternative reasons for Miliband’s decision to drop out of fluffing the Saudi King. Boulton goes as far as to bring Miliband’s Jewish descent into it.

But, no we’re assured, there’s nothing sinister about Miliband’s absence. The child him and his wife had planned to adopt turned up early and he’s taking his two week entitlement. All fair enough, and good luck to them, I say.

That being the case, Miliband being unable to participate in a state visit from the head of a state with who we have such an important strategic relationship, why was the Foreign Secretary posting to his blog yesterday morning, making written statements on Iraq the day before, and making a joint statement with the MoD on how swimmingly it’s all going in Basra?

The first weeks my kids were born, I was barely capable of feeding and cleaning myself let alone making statements of international import. On top of that, Miliband must be jetlagged off his gourd after his second transatlantic trip in a fortnight - he was at the UN last week and rushed back to the States for the arrival of his adoptive son.

Surely a man of such prodigious energies could have spared King Abdullah and his entourage an hour or two?

UPDATE: Matthew Norman:

Such a refreshingly bright, likeable and modest chap is David Miliband, and so clearly a heart-in-the-right-place kinda guy, that I feel slightly guilty about yielding to such flippancy. Only slightly, though, because however admirable his paternal instincts, and however laudable his distaste for the King (if that did play a part in his absence), he is still the bleedin’ Foreign Secretary and as such expected to put his public life first. Bonding with a new baby is an important and delicious parental experience, as Abdullah, Sultan of the Wet Wipes, would be the first to agree.

Yet the process is hardly compromised by missing the first two days of a child’s life. As a Cabinet Minister, Mr Miliband has played a collective part in sending men into action, causing them to miss the first two months, and much more, of their babies’s lives. None of them missed a battle because of paternity leave.