Be honest Vicky Pryce, how is that whole revenge thing going? Is it all you had hoped for? It was a dish served after sitting on the counter for a very long time, so it must have been cold but the thing with revenge is that you are supposed to serve it someone else. That's key really. You don't slop a dose of cold revenge on a plate and then eat it yourself.
Vicky Pryce and her nemesis ex-husband will be served a banquet of revenge soon but it will be the state that will bring it to the table. No need to tip. The authorities are really very cross indeed, or are feigning to appear that way because of something utterly trivial that happened ten years ago, which would never have been brought to the attention of the authorities if only Vicky could have kept her mouth shut, or Chris could have kept his pants on.
In March 2003, Chris was driving at the wholly unremarkable speed of 90 miles per hour on a motorway at night. If there is anyone in the land who would claim that they have never done the same, they are either lying or they drive an Austin Allegro, exclusively on Sundays and only if it is clement, while sporting a flat cap that they have owned since the fifties. He was doing this rate on a dead straight, mostly empty road which had been built specifically for speed and in a car that only stops accelerating when it reaches 155 mph because the manufacturer artificially stops it from going any faster. It is a vehicle that you could do 90 miles an hour in without needing to turn the radio up to hear the quiet bits of Stairway To Heaven. Modern cars are like that. Modern speed limits have not responded to the improvements in motoring technology but the methods of catching those that transgress these archaic rules certainly have.
It was the dead-eyed flash of a speed camera that set the events in motion. Chris was driving back to London from Stansted Airport to be back with his dear darling wife. He had already accrued enough points on his licence for this latest transgression to result in losing it altogether, which he calculated could have undone him, career-wise. He asked his wife, who wasn't even in the car with him to pretend that she was at the wheel. It might have worked if he had not have undone himself, trouser fly-wise.
Years after the speed camera snap, Chris had a dalliance with, as is the way of these things, a much younger woman. This caused Vicky much anguish, she sued for divorce and then, as is often the way of these things, she set herself the task of payback. It did not turn out well for either of them. It could all have been so different.
Chris Huhne was educated privately and was bright enough to attend Oxford University and the Sorbonne in Paris. He got a first in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He edited the student magazine, he started a financial risk rating company, he wrote for The Guardian and The Independent, he authored books. His ex-wife, Vicky Pryce is a multi-linguist, a decorated economist and governmental high flyer. They earned huge sums of money. They were a very bright couple. Stupidest bright couple ever.
They blew it all because of some little lie to avoid speeding points that the law affects to find super colossally important. They face life imprisonment. I am not making that up. It won't come to that but it is an indication of how monumentally seriously the law takes itself. Just about the worst thing you can do is to disrespect it. They call it, quite magnificently, Perverting the Cause of Justice. How fantastically pompous a description of something so mundane. Murderers face the possibility of less harsh punishment. If everyone who had lied to avoid a traffic fine was sentenced to jail, half of the drivers in the country would have been inside at some point and we would have to build a wall round Essex to keep them all in.
In 2003, in trying to hold on to his driving licence, Chris Huhne sowed the seeds for his eventual downfall. It is one of the many great ironies of the case that he lost that licence the very same year for talking on his mobile while driving. I wonder if he was calling his wife.