“Really, you’d be prepared to do a deal with the Tories?” I asked. I’m on a windswept platform waiting for a train with Chris Huhne. “Yes, and that is the most likely outcome of the next election,” he replies.
It is 2006, and we’ve just been to a Parliamentary Party meeting where every other MP said a deal with the Tories was “inconceivable”.
Later, Huhne fought a leadership campaign against Nick Clegg and was perceived to be on the left of the party. Three years later, in early 2010, he tabled a minority report – of one person – to Clegg, suggesting that a full coalition with either the Conservatives or Labour would be the only way to tackle the structural deficit.
His fellow coalition negotiators Danny Alexander, David Laws and Andrew Stunell disagreed: they believed the only deal to be struck with the Conservatives was one of “confidence and supply”, supporting the Queen’s Speech and Budget but sitting on their hands for the rest.
History proved Huhne right, so no wonder he has an air of confidence, which oozes from his profiles this week in Total Politics and the Independent on Sunday.
It’s a confidence that enables a member of the cabinet to make an interesting intervention on the phone hacking scandal, one that sees this as a widespread media practice that Scotland Yard has failed to investigate properly.
Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, is widely believed to have secured one of the best Comprehensive Spending Review settlements, liked by civil servants and applauded for unblocking the financial barriers to investment in renewables. However, his full-steam-ahead approach to nuclear power and the paralysis of progress on the Green Investment Bank is storing up frustration in the Lib Dems.
The best observation in the Total Politics profile is made by Rob Wilson MP. He suggests it is hard to place Huhne as a left-winger or an “Orange Booker”. I agree – to judge the cover of the weighty tome that is Chris Huhne would be a mistake for anyone. You’d probably get it wrong.
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