I imagine Chris Huhne has had better weeks. Forced to plead guilty for making his now ex-wife take his three penalty points when he was caught speeding. An admission that has cost him his job as a Member of Parliament and could well lead to short spell serving Her Majesty in another way, this time behind the cold bars of a prison cell.
The background to what happened is as simple as it is bewildering as to how two intelligent people could have concocted such an odd plan. Chris Huhne was caught speeding, when the forms arrived for him to complete and have the penalty points placed on his license, he asked his wife to take the blame for him. Whether or not he forced his wife to do this is subject to an ongoing court case so, as I write this, I cannot possibly comment on whether or not she felt coerced into doing so.
Needless to say Mrs Huhne did take the blame and took the points on her license. Mr Huhne became a high flyer within the Liberal Democrat party and joined the front bench of the coalition government. So far so good for this little wheeze to get out of such a minor road traffic offence. Please bear in mind at this point that all that Mr Huhne would have faced when he was flashed by that fatal speed camera was the three points on his license, no further fine or prison sentence, indeed it is unlikely it would have proved much a bar to parliamentary career. So why he cooked up this plan to ask somebody else to take the blame is a bizarre mystery.
People lie all the time. It is one of those unfortunate traits of human life that some people will try to deflect the blame whenever they can. That is why the Americans have that cheesy story about George Washington as a young child owning up to damaging an apple tree with an axe. It is to show that it is much better and honourable to be honest than it is to lie. As an interesting aside one may like to note that story is itself a lie as it never actually happened but it has stayed within the American consciousness.
Mr Huhne’s great plan was working swimmingly and then, oh dear, and then he had an affair. There is a great cliché and saying that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. The way this little tale suddenly twisted against Mr Huhne proved this fable, unlike the George Washington one, to be true.
Mrs Huhne filed for divorce which is bad enough but for a politician in the twenty first century not particularly damaging. Until the now ex-Mrs Huhne bumped into a journalist. Initially this journalist wanted to pick her brains on the state of the economy given that Mr Huhne’s ex-wife is an economist and was married to somebody high up within the government. What she did not know was that she was about to pick up a quite delicious scoop.
As I said earlier, the actual facts about whether or not Mr Huhne forced his ex-wife to take the blame is subject to a court case but what we do know is that for years after the story broke he denied all the allegations, despite as we later found during the court case that his continual denial made a traumatic experience for his family even worse as it ripped his family apart. He continued to deny the allegations until, quite dramatically, he had a last minute change of heart and he pleaded guilty to the charges.
Mr Huhne will not be sentenced until after his wife’s trial is over but what we do know is that he had to resign as an MP, his career his ruined. He is likely to be facing a prison sentence. Had he simply took the three penalty points on his license he would not be in this position he is now.
Indeed, what a tangled web we weave……
