Huhne's Loss

So Mr and Mrs Huhne are off to court today. Odds are, he’s going down sometime soon. Yet another politician whose hubris has led him to Ford Open. Let’s not worry about him too much. He’ll land on his feet. They always do.

More interesting are the consequences for (a) the Lib Dems, (b) Cleggy and (c) the Coalition.

Lib Dems – One of their magic bullets was always that with no likelihood of power, no one was at all interested in their sleaze. It always existed – humans are humans after all – it was just that no one in media land gave a toss about them. This nicely linked in with their ‘holier than thou’ sanctimony that has always been soooo annoying – Paddy Pantsdown, Good Time Charlie, Ming the Merciless, Cleggy and the worst of all, Gay Boy Simon (am I allowed to say that?). Perhaps one of the most annoying was of course Inmate No 21831. Oh I’m sorry, Chris Huhne. How things have changed.

You see, this story is going to run and run: first there’s the prelims starting today, then there’s the actual trial, the affair evidence, the divorce evidence, the witnesses – Cleggy?, the Spanish Infanta? (would you, would you? Come on you probably would) and so it will go on. All horrible stuff if you are already languishing in single figures in the polls and part of your USP is that you don’t do sleaze like those other horrible parties. Not good.

Cleggy – Looks a bit lonely now, doesn’t he? His Lib Dem big guns – I know, but everything’s relative – have one by one been upended: Laws the Fiddler, the Busted Sage of Twickenham, Hubris Huhne, all dead in the swing voters eyes. And all around him remain intellectual Lilliputians, except Sarah Tether who is a real Lilliputian and holds a marginal seat where she will die in May 2015 anyway. Not good, again.

The Coalition – Drip, drip, drip go the sands in the political hourglass. This is the problem with Government – “Events, dear boy, events”. But for the Tories is does mean that come May 2015, in lots of seats all over the country, the ‘whiter than white’ Lib Dems have been sullied. Much easier to take them on.

Result: Cameron 1, Cleggy -2