From the BBC:
Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne has confirmed he is separating from his wife and is in a relationship with another woman.
The 56-year-old Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh, Hampshire, has been married to Vicky Pryce for 25 years. They have five children and one grandchild.
“I am in a serious relationship with Carina Trimingham and I am separating from my wife,” he said in a statement.
Ms Trimingham works in PR. Downing Street did not comment.
You can read the full report here.
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57 Comments
Was this widely known and accepted before then?
Hopefully his wife is not just finding out and the breakdown on their relationship was not a result of the new one?
I guess certain people took exception to Chris’s comments about BP last week (the company being almost as American as it is British), and are worried about what he might try to do to reduce carbon emissions. Those who deviate from the North American elite party line can expect this kind of treatment. Chris has to be thankful that he hasn’t paid with his life, like the two Kennedy brothers did.
I do wish this wasn’t news.
not the first – not the last! Typically devastating for the kids but this is just the phoney war against the Lib Dems – wait until June 22nd!
Typical Lib Dem.
No seriously, family breakdown is tragic – I hope it isn’t too painful for him, his wife or his kids.
Why is that news?
Seem to me it’s between him and his family and nobody else’s business, or interest.
it seems huhne has only admitted this when the paper was about to reveal it. i feel sorry for his wife and kids ,finding it out like this. they must have been so proud of him last month,now this.
“Chris has to be thankful that he hasn’t paid with his life, like the two Kennedy brothers did.”
I don’t wish to sound illiberal, but should psychiatric patients really be allowed Internet access?
Tabloid scum at work again.
Anthony,
I will ignore your crude personal abuse for a moment, and ask you a question that no-one on this forum seems to want to discuss, let alone attempt to answer:
Why, over a week ago, did Chris Huhne criticise the US political establishment’s scapegoating of BT (pointing inter alia to the fact that BP is almost as American as it is British in terms of shareholdings), then on “Question Time” last Thursday decline to utter a word of criticism of the US government, Congress and media, even to the extent of refusing to distance himself from Obama’s offensively hyperbolic likening of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to 9/11?
And here’s another one:
What do the wider Conservative Party, big business and the oil companies think of Chris Huhne’s stated motivation in accepting his ministerial portfolio, which is to tackle climate change?
You see, a lot of Liberal Democrats are indulging in make believe and self-deception about this so-called coalition. The sooner they realise it, the better for all of us. First David Laws, now Chris Huhne. It seems that any Liberal Democrat in this arrangement who wants to do anything liberal isn’t going to last. The media didn’t even bother to report the marital problems of Douglas Hurd and Sir Sheath Joseph, and quite a few others. Why Chris Huhne? Think about it.
Oh, and don’t just rail about the viciousness of our yellow press. That is merely to state the obvious. Ask WHY they do what they do.
Now, if you can explain how the “official” accounts of the Kennedy assassinations make sense, then you will have succeeded where every necon hack on the Planet has conspicuously failed.
See, personal abuse doesn’t shut me up!
Sesenco
Sorry for being slow on the uptake, but are you saying that Chris Huhne was blackmailed into withdrawing his criticism of “The Great Satan” by people threatening to reveal his extra-marital shenanigans?
So he complied with that blackmail, but somebody decided to spill the beans anyway? So now if he retaliates by renewing his criticism of the USA, Barack Obama will have no option but to order his assassination?
Scary stuff.
@Anthony Aloysius St
That coolly clinical (and very funny) demolition was much more cruel than any personal insult 😉
Stop playing games, Anthony. You left primary school decades ago.
(1) Both Chris Huhne and David Cameron have changed their positions on BP and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in the space of a few days from one of irritation at the scapegoating of BP to one of abject subservience to the Americans. This indicates to me, though evidently not to you, that the government’s stance on this issue has been dictated from Washington.
(2) Chris Huhne holds views about climate change that are unlikely to find favour in elite circles. Moreover, he has gone into government with the express obective of harming oil company profits (sorry, reducing carbon emissions). Does this suggest to you that Chris Huhne is likely to be popular or unpopular with the paymasters of our media?
(3) It is not always the case that the private lives of leading politicians are exposed in the media. I can think of many high profile figures whose bed-hopping activities were ignored by the mainstream press, most of them Conservatives. Liberal Democrats, by contrast, seem to be treated as fair game by the hacks. In the last Parliament we had Mark Oaten, Lembit Opik and Paul Keech turned over, now it’s the turn of Laws and Huhne. Does this not lead you to think that the media’s paymasters don’t much like Liberal Democrats?
(4) The two Kennedy assassinations were extreme examples of elements within a state eliminating politicians who were doing things, or threatening to do things, that elites did not like. I mention them to make the point that Huhne has got off quite lightly given the lengths that elites will sometimes go to protect their interests.
Anthony, what you are engaging in by hurling silly, juvenile insults at me is taboo enforcement. In this case the taboo against questioning “official” accounts of the Kennedy assassinations. You have failed. Now chuck it.
Shawcross,
You’re not the neocon journalist, William Shawcross, by any chance?
Anthony, please be so kind as to point to where I have used the term “The Great Satan”.
@Sesenco
No – I am a far more shadowy and nefarious operator. I am … Bob the Builder.
sesenco youre wrong about the kennedy’s .sad american loser killed jfk,sad palestinian loser killed bobby but you’re right about the tory press systematically damaging the reputations of top libdems. probably hoping by the time the next election the voters will be disillusioned with them and give cameron an outright victory. theres probably more to come. i hope clegg and cable are squeaky clean.
Rule #1 of internet: ignore the trolls.
rule #2, ignore the conspiracy theorists
Well, unless you like pointless arguments…
Sandra F,
Are sudden, unexplained changes in coalition policy (eg, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill) “conspiracies” that we are entitled to ignore?
What is your definition of “conspiracy”? It sounds to me as if you are using the word as a smear term to shut down discussion in areas that you want left under the carpet.
Now, I have succeeded in getting WIlliam Shawcross out of bed in the early hours of the morning. Not bad for a day’s work!
Paul,
Sadly, no-one is 100% squeaky clean. Even Danny Alexander, who did nothing wrong at all, got the treatment.
5.00pm news on Radio 4 on Saturday, the interviewer asked how the coalition would deal with this second resignation.
Perhaps he should have thought of that when he was promoting, during campaigning, jaunty Polaroids of himself as loyal husband and father. I don’t particularly care if someone’s involved with this (although I am sympathetic to those hurt), but Huhne brought his personal life into the public.
Wa-haha! Two pomposity pricked!
Ooo, that sounds like a personal insult (and barely relevant to what Anthony said).
I see the Mirror is reporting that Carina Trimingham was previously in a civil partnership with a woman. That’s a new twist.
In this case, Anthony, I do have to say that’s prurient and… whoa!!!
No, you suggested that the Kennedy freres were whacked for political disobedience, and stated that Huhne was unmasked ‘cos of political disobedience. Maybe you meant the Great Fluffy Kitten, but it would equally have been based in weirdness.
And, as you should recall, Anthony defended Alexander where he had criticized Laws.
Kehaar,
Is Anthony a national newspaper?
You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to know that there are powerful forces in the USA which will use pretty well any means at their disposal to neutralise threats to their economic and political hegemony. Sesenco does a valuable job in reminding us that the world is not the cosy place many Liberal Democrats seem to imagine it to be.
Predictable tactics by ‘the powerful’ (and their willing servants in the Mail and the People), and (apparently) astonishing naivity from Chris and his PR. Meanwhile, my local Lib Dems feel it is ‘unfair’ to mention that three of our Tory Councillors have been convicted of criminal behaviour (in unconnected cases) since the last District elections…..
a quick look at Guido’s confirms my suspicions.
This is the same man who wrote in his election literature: “Family matters to me so much. Where would we be without them?”
odious
Sesenco, neither Anthony (as far as I’m aware) nor I work for any national noospaper, let alone those mentioned in this thread, so we have nothing to apologize for with regards to their conduct.
Yes you do, especially when the alleged target is someone as inconsequential as the British Energy and Climate Change Secretary (who, by extension, thinks climate change is inherently bad and man-made).
And I’m about to do a valuable job of reminding you that the Korean peninsula ain’t a peaceful haven. Irrelevant? No more so than suggesting summat which no-one here had disputed.
Good grief, Terry, *where*?
MotS, we’re on board ship here, so mind your language.
I agree about the piccies Guido has displayed (I’m not going to link as I don’t wish to give him more web-traffic).
Kehaar wrote,
“Yes you do, especially when the alleged target is someone as inconsequential as the British Energy and Climate Change Secretary (who, by extension, thinks climate change is inherently bad and man-made).”
You have hit the nail on the head (especially the bit in parenthesis). Huhne was proposing to do things that those who are now attacking him don’t like.
Man in the street,
I guess you speak as an upstanding family man, though your choice of vocabulary leads me to wonder.
Anthony,
The term, “The Great Satan”, applied to the United States, is used by followers of the Ayatollah Khomeni in Iran. Are you alleging that I am an Islamic fundamentalist, in addition to being a mental patient and a conspiracy theorist (most of whom say climate change is a scam, incidentally)?
I actually live in his constituency. Whoever was delivering that campaign leaflet must have missed my street, because I know I didn’t get any of those. Mostly I got head-and-shoulders shots of him grinning into the camera in a vaguely disturbing fashion. To the best of my knowledge, and I was following the local campaigns, “family” was never an issue of any kind – people around here like Huhne because he’s a bloody hard worker and has always done right by us, and I don’t think many people knew his wife’s name. This smells like a frame-up.
Sesenco, why is there a duck on your head?
Andrerw Suffield,
Your penultimate sentence answers the question in your final line. A lot of people don’t like having to confront uncomfortable truths.
BTW, I spent a damp afternoon delivering leaflets for Chris Huhne, and I would do it again, again and again.
Andrew, if Guido’s being economic with the actualíty, I’ll take it back… yet, the point remains that Huhne has willingly placed himself in the public sphere, in a profession which intertwines personal with the public (even Laws did this with a publicity shot of him standing by a framed photograph of nephews/nieces).
What, halt climate change? Would he next turn back the tide?
How very middle-class of you. The working and upper classes never have shied away from such.
What, only ever them? Have you never heard of poetic license?
Kehaar,
“What, halt climate change? Would he next turn back the tide?”
Whether or not it is possible to halt climate change is not for me to say. What should not be in doubt is that those who believe it is possible to halt climate change and wish to do so (ie, most Lib Dems) are proposing measures (such as reduction in carbon emissions, oil dependency, etc) that certain powerful elites do not want implemented. (Most of the people you call “conspiracy theorists” say climate change is a scam, so there is one brickbat you can’t chuck in my direction!)
“How very middle-class of you. The working and upper classes never have shied away from such.”
My maternal grandfather, who was a foreman in the Clyde shipyards, wouldn’t even permit his children to say “goodness”.
“Have you never heard of poetic license?”
I have also heard of smears, insinuations, guilt by association, character assassination, taboo enforcement, and quite a few more.
The Liberal Democrats are currently under attack from powerful elites like never before. Those Liberal Democrats who insist on hurling juvenile insults at those who point this out are going to have to throw aside the blinkers if they wish to party to survive. Laws, Alexander, Huhne – who is next?
Yes it is, if you wish to be part of any related discussion. Climate change is an ongoing process above and beyond human activity.
What, like suggesting the Kennedy freres were whacked? Don’t you think that this thread would be helped if you, just for once, took responsibility for summat which has passed from your own lips?
If you think Anthony’s remark was politically abusive, you really need to get out more.
Such as? Or are they so powerful that they’ve managed to conceal their identities from the sheeple?
Your Party is in Government. This is what comes with power.
And I’ve heard other Clyde workers fling flurries of f*cks. Have you read the Dunciad?
I think Senseco might actually be somewhere near right this time. I don’t think Dick Cheney is sitting in his batcave issuing orders to Rupert Murdoch against any politician that threatens neoconservative hegemony. But the right wing press has been attacking us since the first debate. “Clegg is a Nazi.” “Danny Alexander fiddled his expenses.” “David Laws fiddled his expenses.” “Steve Webb ate my hamster.” (OK, the last one isn’t real, but it’s only a matter of time!) I know for a fact that journalists from these papers are searching for dirt in the pasts of prominent Lib Dems. This isn’t about scrutiny. It’s about trying to break up the coalition, and allowing the government to be taken over by the lunatic Tory fringe. We must resist them.
“Sesenco, why is there a duck on your head?”
I would guess he finds it more effective than a tin foil hat…
I should point out that I don’t regard Huhne posing with his family in a leaflet as being a very serious deception, certainly not a resigning matter. Nor do I think it’s a sign of hypocrisy – it isn’t as if Huhne was ever an advocate for ‘traditional values’ or anything like that.
Kehaar,
“Your Party is in Government. This is what comes with power.”
I you are right, please explain why the only ministers turned over by the press thus far have been Liberal Democrats?
There was a minister in both the Thatcher and Major governments, still active in politics, who in the mid-1980s was cavorting with the wife of a titled aristocrat, so indiscreetly that they were spotted dining together in a posh restaurant in Knightsbridge (no, I won’t stoop to naming the guy). Not a single national newspaper reported this, and I had to read about it in “Private Eye”. Why so?
Marry me, Anthony.
Who’s talking about resignation? I’m not. I am responding to the “how very dare they” attitude which appears from certain LDVers whenever one of their ‘own’ is criticized, as well as the blithering stupidity – from those who knew – which would have been required to think this wasn’t going to come up.
At worst, I consider Huhne to be a comedic character like the Rev. Mr. Stiggins.
Because the papers in question are Tory-supporting. That’s what happens.
Would you be similarly outraged if there were similar attention given to a misbehaving Labour MP? Or is this a rather confused attempt at special pleading?
I dunno about contributors to this thread, but I don’t doubt that LibDem circles have cheerily referred to John Prescott as Two Jags/
@Foregone Conclusion
That is such old news, can we drop that one, already!
😉
To be honest this is a non story.
So an MP has been having an affair? So it’s a prominent Lib Dem. So What? Nothing different to Tory or Labour MPs they’ve all done it. Remember Major preaching “back to basics” while having an affair with Edwina?
“Steve Webb ate my hamster.
That is such old news, can we drop that one, already!”
Provided that’s all he did to it, I think it should be survivable …
MP’s marriage break-up attracts 43 comments on LDV…
Do you guys have too much time on your hands?
It’s not us that’s making a fuss about it. The Daily Mail is saying that the Huhne affair is proof that the Lib Dems are unfit to be a party of government. Seriously.
“MP’s marriage break-up attracts 43 comments on LDV…
Do you guys have too much time on your hands?”
To be fair, nearly half of them are by Sesenco.
That’s shut them up Kirsten!
Let’s be fair, we’re wittering while thinking. We’d all like to say something about how to solve the coalition problem – but the ideas elude us!
there are many libdems with skeletons ( i assure you)
it’s just up till now, no-one cared enough to make something of them
“there are many libdems with skeletons ( i assure you)”
Undoubtedly. The only question is how many of those skeletons include the backbone.
how much money do you have?
???? ???? ???? ????
“The only question is how many of those skeletons include the backbone”
Nice one, AA!
Barry,
“how much money do you have?”
In Anthony’s case, evidently quite a lot, because it doesn’t seem as if he needs to work!
This gloating by Labour trolls is tempting fate on their part. If it looked as if the Labour Party was about to come to power, every little personal pecadillo would be dredged up, misrepresented and splashed over the front pages. It is because Labour is very unlikely to come to power in the near future, and the Liberal Democrats are playing a small role in government, that it is Liberal Democrat politicians who are being trashed, and not Labour ones.
Odd that Gramsci wheels out the “C” word to pour scorn on the fact that international elites want the Liberal Democrats out of government and are using their comics to do it. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was the Labour Party that was saying exactly the same thing, back in the days when Tony Benn and Kern Livingstone were being turned over on a daily basis by the tabloids and broadsheets alike. And the Labour Party was right. There was indeed a conspiracy involving powerful elites to do down Labour politicians, particularly Benn and Livingstone.
Chris Huhne is threatening to hurt the elites in their pockets by enacting measures to reduce overall energy consumption. The elites might be prepared to put up with a stalling of the control agenda for a few years as a way of getting the Conservatives into government with Lib Dem help, but they won’t tolerate anything that even slightly detracts from their immense wealth and power. Laws, Alexander, Huhne. The skittles are hit one after the other. It’s obvious, isn’t it?
The “Daily Mail” claims to stand for family values. That is presumably why Paul Dacre sent his son to a boarding school (Eton).
“In Anthony’s case, evidently quite a lot, because it doesn’t seem as if he needs to work!”
For your information, the CIA pays me very well indeed for my activities on Lib Dem Voice!
Not my place to have a view on his personal life or personal choices. It’s pretty poor, though, that he chose to present himself as he did in his election leaflets, knowing what he did at the time.
Ian’s right, but that just makes the guy a total prat which may not necessarily affect his worth as an MP.