The former
British energy minister Chris Huhne, along with his ex-wife, the economist
Vicky Pryce, has been sent to jail.
What was Huhne’s
crime? Ten years ago Huhne was caught by the speed cameras driving at 69 mph in
an area where the speed limit was 50 mph. He would have had 3 points docked
from his driving license had he accepted the penalty. Except that he didn’t. He
claimed that it wasn’t he but his (then) wife Vicky Pryce who was behind the
wheels when his car was caught on the cameras exceeding the speed limit. Pryce
accepted: yes she was the one who broke the speed limit. She had the points
docked from her driving license. She then got on with her career of doling out
sound economic advice to industries and companies for fees which were slightly
more than the annual budget of a small African country, while Huhne carried on
with his political career, which saw him installed as the energy minister in the
coalition government in 2010, allowing him to pursue his lifelong obsession
of ruining Britain’s countryside, by erecting pointless wind turbines, to its
logical conclusion.
Vicky Pryce
So far so
good (or bad), one might say. If only it were as simple as that.
Chris
Huhne, a Liberal Democrat MP, was, on two occasions, a serious contender for
the leadership of the party, and almost won; he gave its current leader, the
feckless Nick Clegg, a good run for his money. (In light of what happened
subsequently, the Lib Dem supporters, the few that are left, must have heaved a
collective sigh of relief that he didn’t).
At the time
of his leadership bid for the Lib Dems, in 2007, Huhne was assisted by a woman named Carina Trimingham. Trimingham,
more than 10 years younger than Huhne (but no spring chicken, I should add),
was also a Lib Dem activist. After Huhne’s failed bid to become the leader of
the Lib Dems, he and Trimingham started having an affair. (I need not add that
the affair was a secret one; that’s the whole point of sexual affairs; it is de rigueur that they are secret; the
unsuspecting partners and spouses must be kept in blissful ignorance for as
long as possible.) To add a bit more spice to what is already promising to be a
vindaloo, I should mention that when Huhne had Trimingham swooning (one assumes
it was his unimprovable charisma, and not his breath) Trimingham was, for all
outward appearances, a person of homoerotic orientation, according to subsequent
newspaper reports. She was apparently living with and was in a civil
partnership with another woman. Huhne, drawn, one supposes, to Trimingham’s
womanly charms, and Trimingham, curious, one supposes, to find out how the
other side bats, devoured each other, one imagines, with the same relish one’s
ex-girlfriend reserved for smoked oysters on toast. Huhne’s Greece-born wife,
the celebrated economist, who was once described by Huhne (with the reverence befitting
a missionary wife describing her husband’s evangelical work in North Africa) as
a very intelligent woman who earned considerably more than him, remained
unaware (allegedly) of what her husband of 25 years was getting up to and (if
you can imagine it without feeling queasy) in to. One assumes that Trimingham’s
civil partner (a woman named Julia Bennett whom Trimingham married the same
year she and Huhne started seeing a lot
of each other) was similarly unaware.
Carina Trimingham
During the May
2010 general election, in which he held on to his seat in Hampshire, Huhne
presented himself as a happily married man; leaflets were distributed depicting
him and Pryce as a happy husband and wife. (He might not have been lying; he
was married, and was, no doubt, very happy, happier than a cat that was
enjoying two saucers of milk). One wonders how long this state of affair would have
continued had not Huhne been secretly photographed, within a month of his
election victory, by a scumbag investigator working for a scumbag British
tabloid, in his constituency home with a woman—who stayed the whole night in
the house, it was further alleged; the night, it would be safe to assume, they
didn’t spend playing cards)—who was not his wife. Who was the mystery woman?
Trimingham, of course. It was all out now. Huhne then announced that yes he had
fallen in love with Trimingham, and yes he had decided to leave his wife (of
vastly superior intelligence and wealth).
Within
months of Huhne’s marital desertion the news appeared of the speeding offence
in 2003. Who alerted the newspapers of what any person with a modicum of sense would
be forced to accept was a minor peccadillo? It most certainly wasn’t Huhne, and
it wasn’t Trimingham. Yes, you guessed it correctly; it was Pryce, who, it
would be fair to assume, was more furious with Huhne than Manchester United
football fans I watched sometime ago in a Champion League match after their
team lost to Real Madrid and they decided that the referee was to be blamed.
The scene was set: the jilted wife wanting to see her philandering
husband quartered or, if that was not possible, whup his hide so hard for
months he wouldn’t be able to sit in the cushiest of armchairs without wincing, or, if even this very reasonable wish was not going to be met because of
some namby-pamby concerns about ours being a civilized country, then drag his
name through the mud, ruin his reputation and political career; despicable
journalists utterly untroubled by even a flicker of conscience and interested only
in getting salacious stories that would swell up the sales of their rags, who
egged her on, giving her, in the
process, one imagines the false assurance that
while Huhne would be finis by her
killer blow, she would be able to garner, even bask in, the sympathy only due
to a wronged wife; and interfering busybodies holding, for reasons best known
only to them, a grudge against Huhne and wishing to see him finished, who
incited the jilted wife (already madder than a roomful of hatters) further.
The
newspaper reports claimed that on the night in question in 2003, when Huhne’s
car was caught on the speed camera Pryce was attending a charity dinner in
London on the night in question. Which meant that, unless she was Harry Houdini
or had managed the trick Indian tantrics
spend their whole lives trying to master, which would allow them to be at two
different places at the same time, she could not have been the driver of the
car. The clever British police wasted no time in figuring out that something
rum was going on here. It was obviously a matter great importance, which
required spending tax-payers’ money: did Huhne pass the points on his driving
license to Pryce, or did he not? The Police investigations were opened. Huhne
strenuously denied the disgusting allegations. He was severely disappointed
when the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided that there was a reasonable
chance of getting a conviction, and declared that he intended to defend himself
most rigorously. Huhne protested his innocence in the strongest possible
manner. He protested his innocence all the way to the first day of his trial.
He then pleaded guilty and declared that he considered it his responsibility to
accept the responsibility (so a double responsibility) of something that
happened so many years ago. He then resigned his position as the Member of
Parliament (MP), having already quit the government when he was charged by the
CPS. He announced that he was quitting politics altogether (a sensible
decision, one had to agree, in the circumstances).
Huhne was
toast. His political career lay in tatters; his reputation was destroyed; and
he was exposed, as a liar, to public pillory. Mission accomplished. Pryce could
open a champagne bottle. She had got her wish; Huhne was finished; he was not
just history, he was chemistry and biology. Revenge is a dish, as the relatives
of the unfortunate victims of the former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin would regretfully
confirm, is best served cold. Not so fast. The bloody police and CPS charged
the eminent economist as well, along with her unfaithful ex-husband. She was,
the police charged, an accomplice in this wilful, premeditated crime. Huhne and
Pryce plotted and planned and perpetrated this heinous crime together. Like Huhne, Pryce
protested her innocence, but, unlike Huhne, she did not have a change of heart.
What was her defence? Seeing as it was she who revealed that she took the
points for Huhne even though she was not in the car, she had to accept her
role. She fell back on the archaic legal clause of marital coercion. Pryce, the
poor, vulnerable woman, lacking in self-confidence (who also happened to be a
renowned economist) was, we were invited to believe, forced by the tyrannical and dictatorial Huhne into taking
the points. In the process a lot of dirty linen was washed in public and things
that ought to have remained private were revealed in court in a manner that can
only be described as deeply embarrassing. None of it worked. The jury didn’t
believe a word of it and concluded that Pryce had had a choice in the matter and
she chose—and was not coerced by Huhne—to take the points. She was guilty. At
the time of sentencing Huhne, who was not called upon to give evidence in his
ex-wife’s trial, made it very clear, via his lawyers, that he did not
pressurise Pryce into taking the points. But can the man, who lied persistently
for two years, be believed? Why would anyone think that he was not lying now? But
then, the other party, Vicky Pryce, too, had not been believed—her version of
events was rejected by the jury; in other words, she, too, was considered to have
lied in this matter. They were both liars, more untrustworthy than Tony Blair. Now one would never know what really happened in 2003
between Pryce and Huhne, which resulted in Pryce agreeing to take the points
for Huhne; however, it would not be beyond the realms of possibility that at the time of the speeding offence, in 2003,
Huhne and Pryce were happily married, and, Pryce willingly took the points for
Huhne. Seven years later, when Huhne left her for a younger (though not
necessarily prettier) woman, driven by a desire to seek vengeance and wreak
havoc in Huhne’s life and career, she brought up this relatively minor incident
from the past (though technically and in the eyes of the law an offence). Either
she did not take into consideration that she stood a grave risk of having her
reputation ruined in all this, which, if correct, would suggest a gross error
of judgment on her part; or, she did take this possibility into consideration,
but, driven by the desire to see her ex-husband ruined, she did not care if she
was ruined with him, which, if true, would suggest (again) a gross error of judgment.
In the
Southwark crown court, where Pryce’s trial was conducted and where both Huhne
and Pryce stood together (probably for the last time) in the dock as they were
handed down jail sentences, the judge, justice Mr Sweeney, was at his orotund
best as he passed his judgment (he is a judge, after all; it is his job to pass
judgments). He told the pair, “To the extent that anything good has come out of this whole
process, it is that now, finally, you have both been brought to justice for
your joint offence.” Pryce was
described as “manipulative, controlling and devious”. How did the good judge
come to these sweeping conclusions? I am not saying that Pryce does not possess
any of these attributes. She may well be in possession of some or more or all
of these attributes, and in abundance. The point is how on earth did the good
judge come to this firm conclusion about her character, based on her conduct
during an episode of her life, which, whatever else one might say about her,
would have to be described as, traumatic? What does it say about his judgment?
What
about the sentences? Both Huhne and Pryce have gone down for eight months each
(they will be out, all other things being equal, after serving a quarter of
their sentences). Justice Sweeney
described their misconduct as “most serious and flagrant offence”. Really?
Switching points so that your partner or spouse does not lose license? A survey
carried out by one of the major insurance companies in Britain showed that more
than 10 million people said they would do it if it meant that their partners
did not lose their licenses. Another
survey carried out by AA suggested that more than half a million people may
have already done it. Justice Sweeney will be shocked to learn that almost one
sixth of this country’s citizens would not bat an eyelid before carrying out a “most
serious and flagrant offence”. What about the half a million who admitted in
the anonymous survey that they had already carried out this criminal act and
had escaped the long hand of the law because of their partners or spouses whom
justice Sweeney would have no trouble in describing “controlling, manipulative and
devious” (which would suggest that Britain has become a nation of criminals and
psychopaths, wilfully breaking speed-limits and lying about it afterwards).
The
jail sentences handed out to Huhne and Pryce seem extraordinarily harsh. (I was
therefore astonished to read in the papers that a Conservative Party MP—who else?—has
written to the Attorney General complaining that the jail sentences were too
lenient and demanding a review.) Huhne and Pryce are not career criminals and
it is difficult to see why it was felt necessary to incarcerate them in prison
for several months in order to deter them from switching points again in future.
A friend of mine argued that the jail sentences were justified because Huhne
held a public office and was therefore rightly expected to adhere to a higher
standards of conduct, and, when he fell short of that, was dealt, rightly, more
harshly than say, a habitual career criminal whose list of crimes is longer
than M1 and who does not let anything come in the way of his recidivist
tendencies. I find such arguments puzzling. Surely, sentences handed out should
reflect the severity of crime and not the societal position of the person who
has carried out the crime.
The
sensible thing to do, in this case, would have been to impose fines on Huhne
and Pryce and revoke their licenses.
The
only sentence from the incredibly sententious justice Sweeney that rang true
was when he told Huhne and Pryce: “Any element of tragedy is entirely your own
fault.”
