Hiding Huhne breaks cover (sort of)

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

We’ve been watching the curious antics of Chris “Hiding” Huhne in recent weeks, and while we were at Ed Miliband’s press conference the ambitious minister was breaking cover. Sort of.

At the moment it seems that the elusive Mr Huhne – who turned up at a cabinet meeting today despite dodging the last one – is not conducting a conventional ground war against the PM. Instead, he’s conducting a clever media battle against Nick Clegg for the heart and soul of the Lib Dems.

It’s interesting that Huhne has chosen to break cover on AV, rather than tuition fees, police cuts, the economy or the NHS. Interesting and sad, because it reveals the Lib Dems true priorities. By focusing on electoral reform they have proved that their real interests are niche and self serving. Anyone considering Huhne a worthy future partner for Labour should bear that in mind.

The blatant briefing this morning from both sides (Osborne is trying to bloster himself with the Tory base too), isn’t indicitive of a coalition split yet though. That would require the overthrow of the DPM, which doesn’t yet seem to be on the cards.

What we very clearly have now though is a leader-in-waiting. As the Labour Party knows from experience, that can be a destructive and dangerous position for a party to be in.