Jail looms for disgraced Chris Huhne

By Alex Stevenson

The spectacular collapse of Chris Huhne's political career will be completed later, when he and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce are sentenced for perverting the course of justice.

Huhne is expected to receive a custodial sentence after passing speeding penalty points on to Pryce to avoid damage to his political career.

The average sentence for perverting the course of justice is ten months, but Huhne could escape with significantly less as he changed his plea to guilty at the last minute.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has found it easy to be charitable to his former leadership rival. He told a fringe event at the party's spring conference in Brighton he viewed Huhne as "a very effective secretary of state" and an "extremely powerful thinker".

The man himself was said to be in positive spirits ahead of today's sentencing at Southwark crown court in London.

"Chris is amazingly chipper," a source close to Huhne told the Mirror on Sunday.

"He thinks it will all blow over and if he goes to prison he will be out in no time. He's talking of being out in six weeks."

His ex-wife Pryce could end up behind bars for longer because of her not guilty plea. Her decision to end Huhne's career was motivated by a desire for revenge, after he left her for his aide Carina Trimingham.

Pryce had written in an email to Sunday Times journalist Isabel Oakeshott: "I just want the story out there so he has to resign."

Oakeshott told the BBC's Sunday Politics programme she viewed Pryce as a "broken woman".

"There are two sides to her personality," she explained. "There was the one that was very emotional, and then there's the other that was very rational, and she was very clear what she was doing."

Pryce reportedly spent Sunday buying a radio to listen to while behind bars.

This is the first time a minister has been forced to quit the Cabinet since Jonathan Aitken was jailed in 1999 for perjury.

Aitken told the Today programme that Huhne would find life in jail "disorientating and tough but not terrible".

He explained: "It's all a pretty wild west scene for someone that is used to the relative calm of Westminster."

It continues a nightmare period for the Lib Dems, which has submitted to an independent probe investigating allegations of sexual harassment against former chief executive Chris Rennard and a broader cultural problem within the party.