Chris Huhne: an apology

I have apology to make. I wrote on Friday that I suspected Chris Huhne’s mistweet “fine, but I don’t want my fingerprints on the story” was the Climate Change Secretary briefing against a Cabinet colleague to a Sunday newspaper. This was a horrid allegation to make, suggesting that a member of Her Majesty’s Government would spend his time and energy trying to ridicule a colleague for the benefit of a Sunday newspaper. I now accept that he was not. It was for the Saturday edition of The Guardian. Huhne has just fessed up to Jon Sopel the Politics Show on BBC One:

“In the Eastleigh News website is a recording of Theresa May, a recording from a few months previously of the leader of UKIP, Nigel Farage and it’s exactly the same. I frankly thought it was so funny that when a journalist friend rang me, I told them about it, they said they’d write the story. They wanted to know whether I wanted to comment on it and I said no I didn’t want to comment on it.”

Except he didn’t say “no comment”. He said he didn’t want his fingerprints on it – having maliciously briefed The Guardian in the first place. But this also means he lied when he told the BBC on Friday that “It was supposed to be a private message to a member of staff about a local story.” Now, Patrick Wintour did find a member of the Government who was also so struck by the Eastleigh News website that they told Wintour:

“Not only has Ms May been caught out making up stories about the Human Rights Act for cheap laughs, she has been plagiarising her clap lines from the UK Independence Party.”

When challenged by Sopel, Huhne categorically denied being the source of this quote. And I, of course, believe him.