The World's Sleaziest Politician Goes to Jail

Here in the USA, we're all used to the downfall of sleazy, ethics-free politicians. And the low depths they reach in demeaning themselves and besmirching their families. Be it by sex, theft or just every-day scumminess.

Senator John Edwards who was fathering a child with his mistress/"videographer" under the nose of his cancer-stricken dying wife as she was working to get him elected president

Speaker Newt Gingrich who generously helped one of his wives take her mind off her cancer by giving her the distracting news (in her hospital bed) that he was dumping her for a younger model.

But -- no disrespect to American politicians -- they have all met their match in terms of plumbing the depths of human sludge compared to the loathsome British politician who has just been sentenced to jail for "perverting the course of justice." Incidentally, that English crime isn't the equivalent of the American charge of "obstructing justice." It doesn't mean just blocking the course of justice. It means what it says. Full-blooded, premeditated, pro-active malevolent criminality.

On becoming a member of the UK government cabinet in May 2010, he was appointed to Her Majesty's "Privy Council" -- a conclave of senior UK politicians who, once inducted, keep that role for life -- thus landing the prefix he'd long craved of "The Right Honorable". But having pleaded guilty to a serious felony and been sent "down river" to jail, he is now one of only four members ever to be forced to resign in disgrace from the Queen's Council. The other three were also discovered to be out-and-out criminals. Though none that can compare in tawdriness to the deeply-loathed Huhne who is in a putrid league of his own. And with that forced resignation he he is no longer "The Right Honourable." He's officially Dis-Honoured for the rest of his life. For posterity. And all renewable extensions thereupon.

Huhne has just been sentenced to jail time after having admitted his guilt in a ten-year saga of perverting justice that has not only wrecked his political career as a top government minister but also guaranteed that he had to resign from parliament and be stripped of his titles, salary and considerable perks. Given the attitude of Britain's prison population towards white-collar criminals, it may see him stripped of more... Certainly his trademark smirk may be a little changed after he's spent a few months with fellow convicts inside...

In the post-Watergate decades, we're all accustomed to the fact that it's often not the crime that causes the real problem, but the cover-up. And we've also learned that sometimes it's not the import of the original crime that really matters, nor even the cover-up. What is pertinent is what the crime -- however petty -- reveals about the true nature of the person who committed the felony. And the way that the criminal treats those closest to him/her (family and friends). And it's in those two categories that Huhne surpasses all other pretenders to the title of The World's Sleaziest Politician.

Huhne, 58, finally pleaded guilty to a comparatively petty crime he inflicted on his long-suffering wife (who has now divorced him) exactly ten years ago. At the time, in March 2003, Huhne was a member of the European Parliament. A notoriously bad driver with a reputation for speeding, he had accumulated numerous penalty points on his driving license and if he received just three more penalty points he would automatically lose his driving license.

He had also sleazed himself into multi-millionaire status having used his wife's wealth to parlay his connections as a finance reporter into a lucrative career as a financial operator offering insider "tips" on how to exploit small European economies to the barracudas on London's equivalent of Wall Street. He was Gordon "Greed Is Good" Gekko -- cunningly covered with a veneer of environmental do-gooderism as a rising member of Britain's Liberal-Democrats -- a third political party (of no fixed moral compass) in Britain's two-party system.

But because of the wealth he'd accumulated in a surprisingly short time (from "dodgy investments" his wife admitted last week under oath) -- and his portfolio of nine homes (several of which were generating indecent amounts of rental income) he could certainly afford a chauffeur-driven car, or at the very least a taxi service. So he could have lost his driving license for a year and survived life. Many have before...

But Huhne also had an air of ultra-smug entitlement. So he continued to drive himself. One night he drove himself to one of his London homes from an Essex airport after returning from a trip to the European Parliament. The speed limit was 50 mph. But Huhne ignored it and his car was tagged by a speed camera driving at 69 mph. It probably didn't help him that he had decorated his car with vanity license plates "HII H N E."

In the years immediately after he forced his wife to take the speeding bullet for him, it seemed that nothing could go wrong for him. In the UK General Election of 2005 he won election to the British Parliament. And a scant few months later he made clear how ambitious and ruthless he was. The leader of his party Charles Kennedy suddenly resigned after a whispering campaign that he had a "drinking problem." Though the source of the "sauce campaign" has never been confirmed -- the more you learn about Huhne, the less surprised you will be as to who orchestrated the whispers. The obvious next-in-line -- a party elder named Sir Menzies Campbell was assured a clear victory in the internal party election when Huhne suddenly threw down a gauntlet and challenged him (having of course first assured Campbell that he wouldn't run against him.) Despite Huhne coming close to winning, in the end the party sensed something of the slick arriviste about Huhne and he was defeated in the poll by Campbell.

However Huhne came very close to winning. The margin between Clegg and Huhne was just 511 votes. Interestingly, what may have contributed to Huhne's failure to win was a whispering campaign against Huhne himself by those whose seemed to know him best.

A blog called the Anti-Chris! started to draw the attention of the party members due to vote in the election to some of his very questionable behavior including financial dealings that his wife subsequently confirmed were "dodgy" (a British colloquialism for underhand); his bizarre claim in a national newspaper interview that his mother (an amateur actress in neighborhood dramatic societies) had appeared in Hollywood movies as Superman's mother (she hadn't of course -- and she refuted her son publicly), and some very distressing reports about what had transpired between him and his two step-daughters (by his wife's first marriage) to cause them to be so appalled by him. Huhne -- an avowed free-speech advocate -- personally threatened to sue a prominent respected blogger who dared to link to the Anti-Chris blog. Obviously a raw nerve had been touched. It later became apparent that the source of many of the whispers on the Anti-Chris blog emanated from his own family members, who were very aware of just who and what Huhne really was.