FOR somebody known only as the unknown candidate in the Liberal Democrat leadership contest, Chris Huhne is making surprisingly little effort to be interesting.
He lives, he tells The Times after some prompting, in his Hampshire constituency and Clapham, South London, is married with three children and two stepchildren, drives an environmentally friendly hybrid car and supports Chelsea and Southampton football teams. He cooks a little, and not very well, last went to the cinema to see the Narnia film, and saw Sir Ian McKellen as Widow Twanky at the Old Vic.
Asked specifically what his interests are, Mr Huhne hesitates before replying, Third World development and European integration.
This is the unlikely candidate who has got Sir Menzies Campbell’s campaign in a bit of a spin. He is being torn into at Westminster in a whispering campaign from MPs backing Sir Menzies: Mr Huhne went back on a deal not to stand, they say, ten minutes after he had shaken on it, and — horror — he wasn’t very effective in the European Parliament!
As whispering campaigns go, it doesn’t amount to much. The fury of some fellow, young, economically dry Lib Dem MPs known as the Orange Bookers is directed at Mr Huhne because they thought they had a deal that none of them would stand. They would all support Sir Menzies as an elderly candidate likely to step down soon after the general election when they would be slightly better known and one of them could have a shot at the leadership.
Mr Huhne has blown that deal out of the water by suddenly deciding to stand himself — and doing surprisingly well. What is it about him, other than the fact that he isn’t old, isn’t secretly bisexual and isn’t Mark Oaten? A professional campaign, with little announcements of new supporters each day that have given it momentum, combined with a policy platform strong on the environment that appeals to party activists: his support has leapt and made his former allies feel threatened.
The candidate known as boring, but who took a huge risk in standing for the leadership, denied that there had ever been a deal with them. “It was tacit in some of the discussions but it was never made explicit and I was never asked whether I was happy with that.
“What I did do, however, is formally offer my support to Ming before Christmas and I did say to him in the week when I was considering standing that if he wanted to hold me to that I would not stand and he very kindly released me from that particular obligation.”
Having offered to support Sir Menzies, Mr Huhne was subsequently persuaded that someone younger from the Right of the party, and more credible than the doomed Mr Oaten, ought to be a candidate, so threw his hat into the ring. The trouble is, the Orange Bookers who did not have the courage to do so and hid their ambitions behind support for Sir Menzies are now looking worriedly at their former ally.
As Mr Huhne spoke he became more and more convinced that no deal had existed. “Other people thought there was a general understanding; that was not formal, it was at most tacit . . . there was no formal or informal deal.”
Later that became even clearer. “Certainly, a number of people who were on the Ming campaign did say, ‘look, you mustn’t stand etc, etc’, but in the conversations I had it was very clear, and I made it very clear, and it was admitted that there was no explicit deal and, therefore, I couldn’t be accused of welshing on anything.”
They thought there was a deal; he didn’t. On the other hand, Sir Menzies’s backers only seem to have remembered the supposed agreement now that support for Mr Huhne is growing.
Mr Huhne questioned the value of a leader simply keeping the seat warm for someone younger and fresher to emerge. “The questions are going to be, given the likelihood of what may happen after the next election, how long would Ming be leader after the election? Would he be prepared to fight another election? I think that’s very important for the authority of the leader because if a leader is regarded as somebody who is there for a relatively short period of time, there is a danger that they become essentially the chairman of an ongoing leadership campaign amongst all of the young cardinals who are supporting an old pope.”
Mr Huhne, known as a bit of a radical leftie at university, tried to avoid getting drawn into an open fight with those young cardinals. But he did suggest that the briefing against him “is not very sophisticated and I’m not sure it’ll go down very well with the members . . . in general we haven’t had a terribly happy time with people briefing off the record over the past few months.”
He suggested that he had had discussions with Sir Menzies about the briefings. “Both Ming and Simon (Hughes) and I have had individual discussions when we’ve thought our campaign teams are running away with their enthusiasm. We agreed right from the beginning that if there were any problems we should get in touch and attempt to make sure that the campaign was conducted in a positive manner.” Discussions with Ming are “ongoing”.
Up on the moral high ground, then, Mr Huhne was also eager to emphasise that he had stabbed Charles Kennedy not in the back but in the front, signing both the first letter calling on him to resign, and the second. “Once it had all begun, then my feeling very strongly was that it needed to happen very quickly.”
He refused the invitation to suggest that the Orange Bookers hiding behind Sir Menzies were moral cowards, but added, “It’s interesting to point out that I’m the only leadership candidate who signed both letters suggesting Charles should stand down.”
We are on to Narnia when the telephone rings. “Lembit,” announces an aide. Lembit Opik! The MP known for his concern about planetary collision, who supported Mr Kennedy, then Mr Oaten and has admitted, “anyone I seem to back, their careers turn to dust”.
Is Opik the scandal in Mr Huhne’s wardrobe? Lembit is providing “logistical support”, he insisted. “He is very keen to say he’s not backing us . . . we might get hit by an asteroid.”
A secret and a sense of humour! It’s a funny thing that the rather chilly Mr Huhne is hiding both.
THE CONTENDER
Born July 2, 1954, Christopher Murray Paul Huhne
Educated Westminster School, Sorbonne, Magdalen College, Oxford (Philosophy Politics and Economics, 1st)
CV 1976-94: Journalist at the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, The Economist, The Guardian and The Independent. 1994: founded risk-assessment agency, giving credit ratings to countries. 1999: MEP, South East England. 2005: MP for Eastleigh
Manifesto Higher environmental taxes. National insurance to be turned into a local NHS tax. Withdrawal of troops from Iraq by end of year. Big on decentralisation.
Sex, drink, drugs? “I will go for the same line that David Cameron’s taken. I think people deserve a private life before they go into public life.”
Sex or drugs since? “That’s a private matter as well.” Having refused to parade his family even on campaign literature, he regards it as off-limits.
Why vote for him? “I’ve been involved with the domestic policy agenda for a long time . . . I think we need to have a lot of clarity on domestic policy . . . I don’t think that the next election is going to be fought on foreign affairs issues, I think it is going to be on the bread-and-butter domestic agenda.”
