So now we know it was true all along. Chris Huhne really did put pressure on his wife to take speeding points for him.
The scale of the former Guardian journalist's dishonesty is extensive. Obviously he lied at the time of the initial charge. He lied in his public statements. Then he must have lied to his legal team (who could otherwise not have represented him). He made strenuous and unsuccessful efforts to have the prosecution struck out (at considerable expense to you and me, the poor old taxpayers). Only when the reality of the trial hit him did he finally listen to his legal advisors' warnings about the likelihood of a conviction.
Huhne has pleaded guilty in order to get some discount on his sentence.
Amidst the many unattractive features of his behaviour is the depth of ambition it reveals. Here is someone who has clawed his way up the greasy pole only to find the depths beneath yawning. Realising that ruin beckons, he scrabbles all the more desperately to stay aloft.
Here too is the arrogance of power. Motoring convictions are for the little people. People like me don't take a prosecution lying down - we try to get them struck out and issue public protestations of our innocence, deploring that the state should have been so misguided. We call a press conference!
Shades of Rebekah Brooks.
And yet amidst the loss of his career (although I wouldn't bet against a comeback) there is worse. The papers reveal a vituperative exchange of texts between Huhne and his son, a relationship apparently sundered when it became apparent that the ex-minister was leaving his wife for another woman. Of all the woes of his current situation this must be the most painful.
As time goes by the opportunities for philandering become mercifully fewer. So, less mercifully, does the inclination. Flowing blond locks (I have the photos to prove it, honest) fell out long ago, washed down the plughole of life. The clean cut jawline sags like an underdone doughnut. Infidelity, which might once have been attributed to an unscrupulous admirer or a moment of weakness, could now be achieved only by a determined campaign.
Thank God. Because nothing, nothing, would be worth the torment of my children's contempt.
Prison is the least of Chris Huhne's problems.
