A very personal tragedy

I can't say I knew Chris Huhne. I doubt we shared more than a handful of words since my election to Parliament.

Friends of his suggest a man who in private is warm and amusing, at ease in close company — dry, witty, engaging. Others, more distant from him, detect a sizeable slug of ruthlessness behind the tight-lipped smile. For my part I just find myself feeling sorry for his family and thinking hard about his story.

The fact that Huhne had persuaded his then wife to take the penalty for his over-use of the 'lead slipper' on the M11 would never have been known but for the fact that he had begun an affair that contributed to the destruction of his marriage.

On discovering that Huhne was to leave her, his former wife, Southwark Crown Court heard last week, wanted to expose what she saw as his true character — this included attempting to induce him into making incriminating statements during a secretly recorded telephone conversation.

His son was also on his tail and it was to be the disclosure of their texts that were to lead him to change his plea to guilty of perverting the course of justice.

As Huhne heads to prison I am left thinking more about the cruel cunning and deep division between himself and his loved-ones than about his law breaking.

The prospects for the relationships of those who enter parliament are not good, with a recent report stating that one in six MPs who entered the Commons for the first time in 2010 have since suffered from a broken long-term relationship, marital separation or divorce.

I've wondered about why this might be the case. Is it that MPs are perhaps like Mr Huhne — a breed pre-disposed to personal complication or is it something about parliamentary life itself? Or perhaps something of both.

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