Chris Huhne

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Christopher Murray Paul Huhne, known as Chris Huhne, (born 2 July 1954) is a British Liberal Democrat politician and the current Member of Parliament for the Eastleigh constituency in Hampshire. He finished second to Menzies Campbell in the 2006 election for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats and is the party's Shadow Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs in the House of Commons.

1 Career before Parliament
2 Member of Parliament
3 Leadership contest, 2006
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Career before Parliament

He was educated at Westminster School, a boys' independent school in London, and then at the Sorbonne and Magdalen College, Oxford where he was a scholar (Demy), edited Isis, the university magazine, served on the Executive of the Oxford University Labour Club, and achieved a first-class degree in PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics). At Oxford Huhne was active in student politics.

Before his political career, he was a City economist, founding what became one of the largest teams of economists in the private sector. Before that, Huhne was an economic commentator for The Guardian, The Independent and The Independent on Sunday. He was the business editor - head of department - on the Independent and the Independent on Sunday notably during its investigations into Robert Maxwell's fraud on the Mirror group pension fund. He started in journalism as an undercover freelance reporter in India during Mrs Gandhi's emergency when western journalists had been expelled. He also worked as a journalist for the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo and The Economist.

Huhne contested the 1983 general election as a Parliamentary Candidate for the SDP-Liberal Alliance in Reading East. In the 1987 general election, he was the SDP-Liberal Alliance candidate in the Oxford West and Abingdon seat and turned it for the first time into a marginal. The seat was won ten years later by Evan Harris.

Huhne was elected as a member of the European Parliament for South East England from 1999 to 2005, where he was deputy leader of the Liberal Democrat group in the European Parliament. While coming second in the regional poll of party members to select candidates for the 1999 Euro election, Huhne came a comfortable first in the selection for the 2004 Euro elections.

During his time in the European Parliament, Huhne was the only Liberal Democrat MEP in a ranking by the Economist of the three most high-profile UK MEPs (the others being Glenys Kinnock and Caroline Lucas). He was a member of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, concerned with economic and financial policy including regulation of the financial sector. He was economic spokesman for the pan-European Liberal group in the European Parliament and was responsible for introducing "sunset clauses" – time limits on powers – into European legislation for the first time; for radically amending Commission proposals on financial services; and for opening up the European Central Bank to greater scrutiny.

In addition to his European Parliament responsibilities, he was also active in the development of Liberal Democrat policy as chairman of four policy groups: broadcasting and the media; globalisation; the introduction of the euro and the reform of public services. On public services, he argues that money was a necessary condition of improvement, but that the key is now decentralised and democratic control. Local voters need to be able to hold local decision-takers to account.

Huhne is married to Vicky Pryce, Chief Economist at the DTI, and they have five children, three of whom are now grown up.

Huhne is a member of the European Movement, Green Lib Dems, Association of Liberal Democrat Trade Unionists and the National Union of Journalists. He has also written four books that are mainly on the themes either of third world debt and development or European integration: the latest is entitled Both Sides of the Coin (1999, with James Forder), in which he argues the case for British membership of the Euro.

He is also one of the contributors to The Orange Book (2004), in which he advocates reforms to the United Nations and international governance. Huhne was critical of the article in the Orange Book that stirred most controversy, namely the proposals for an insurance-based National Health Service, and has opposed David Laws and Nick Clegg's advocacy of the NHS being 'broken up'. He did not take part in the successor volume, Britain after Blair and has voiced dismay at the way its predecessor was presented as a break with the party's social liberal traditions. More recently, he contributed to the book The City in Europe and the World (2005).

[edit] Member of Parliament

He was first elected to represent Eastleigh at the general election on 5 May 2005, a constituency within the area for which he was previously the Member of the European Parliament. The previous MP for the constituency, David Chidgey, was also a Liberal Democrat who won his seat in what was historically a Conservative area in a by-election in 1994 following the accidental death of Stephen Milligan. The result in 2005 was close, with the swing away from the Liberal Democrats being half the average swing away when a Liberal Democrat MP stands down.

Charles Kennedy appointed Huhne a Treasury spokesman for his party, as shadow chief secretary. Huhne led the opposition in the Commons to new rules allowing full top rate tax relief for the purchase of second homes, buy-to-let properties, vintage wine and other exotic assets for self invested pension plans, tabling an amendment to the finance bill in June, and repeatedly raising the issue. The Treasury reversed its position and accepted these points in the October pre-budget report.

In September 2006 he was one of fourteen MPs forming an all-party parliamentary inquiry into Anti-semitism. It criticised boycotts of Israeli academics as "an assault on academic freedom and intellectual exchange", and accuses "some left-wing activists and Muslim extremists ... of using criticism of Israel as 'a pretext' for spreading hatred against British Jews" ^[1]. Yet Huhne is critical of Israeli policy in the Middle East, and strongly supports the creation of a Palestinian state. He was very critical of the Iraq War and of the Blair government's overall handling of the War on Terror. He described the Israeli response in Lebanon to Hizbollah's rocket attacks as disproportionate and counter-productive, arguing that a strong Lebanese state is in Israel's long-term interest.

In March 2007 it was reported ^[2] that he had written to executives at Channel 4 to try and stop them showing The Great Global Warming Swindle but, in an e-mail exchange with Iain Dale, Mr Huhne denied this, stating that he only wrote to ask for the channel's comments.[1]

[edit] Leadership contest, 2006

Following Charles Kennedy's resignation as party leader, Huhne stood in the election to replace him. He formally launched his campaign on 13 January 2006 as the fourth candidate to succeed Kennedy, following Sir Menzies Campbell, Mark Oaten (who subsequently withdrew) and Simon Hughes.

Huhne was able to carve out a unique position on the issue of green taxation - Huhne argued for a radical expansion of taxes on pollution, allowing for reductions in the income tax rate on the lowest paid [2]. This theme endeared Huhne to environmentalists and market liberals alike, allowing him to gain a march on his rivals and pick-up supporters as the campaign went on. He also argued for a major repeal of the incursions into civil liberties under Labour, and for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq within a year. He described himself as a 'social liberal' and picked up supporters from all sections of the party.

Although the majority of Liberal Democrat MPs (and much of the party establishment) declared its support for Sir Menzies Campbell, Huhne did receive endorsements from some party notables including Lord Maclennan and Lord Rodgers. Two of the party's three former Cabinet ministers backed him. Amongst the media,The Economist, The Independent, the Observer and the Independent on Sunday supported Huhne's leadership bid. Huhne was backed from an early stage by a number of bloggers, and helped gain momentum from a sharp internet campaign.

In the final vote, Huhne finished runner-up, trailing by 21,628 votes to Sir Menzies Campbell's 29,697 after Simon Hughes' second round votes were distributed. Campbell then appointed Huhne as Environment spokesman in the subsequent reshuffle, in order for Huhne to put together a viable programme to expand on his campaign themes.[3]

The brevity of the campaign was never helpful to an outsider in an all-member ballot, and Huhne was still gathering momentum when the leadership race ended. A longer campaign may have enabled him to win. The ideas put forward in his campaign certainly triumphed and have formed the basis of the party's 2006 agenda. His green tax switch became the centre piece of the tax package voted at the Liberal Democrats' Brighton conference in September 2006. It since become a national campaign for the party in the last three months of that year. Other themes taken up by the party from Huhne's leadership campaign include the freedom bill repealing civil liberties infringements[4] and the commitment to a phased withdrawal from Iraq within months not years.[5]