The Waugh Room

Laws? Wait a week, and he'll have served his punishment and be fully rehabilitated.

There's nothing kind or gentle about imposing power cuts and the most expensive energy on the planet. It's a good way to lose an election though.

My sixteen year old son could replace Huhne. Much more sensible and far better connected to reality. And a lot nicer. And infinitely less creepy. My dog is also always on the lookout for new situations, too, and would certainly be much more able and trustworthy than Huhne.

IF Huhne is to leave, then the next minister for energy and climate change should be a climate realist who will back serious and achievable technologies. So far we have had lunatics ploughing billions into windmill subsidies. We need to look at investing seriously in hydrogen, algae, tidal and nuclear energy. We need to stop leading the world in carbon reduction, as cutting the UK's contribution will have NO effect on the climate at all. We could bankrupt this nation and create a modern stone age, where we all live in caves, but never ever light a fire to warm it, and we would still have NO effect on the global climate. We need the BIG contributors, (China, USA, India, Brazil etc), to reduce their contributions. The USA has seen their contributions decline, due to the negative economy. Meanwhile China's roars ahead unabated, producing more carbon per month than the UK produces in a year. I do not mind making sacrifices and cuts providing that there is some payoff for it in the future. However, Britain faces NO payoff whatsoever and 100% downside. Let's restore sanity to the Climate change brief. By all means look towards clean technologies, but let's look at technologies that actually work!

If I were Nick Clegg I would want Huhne's departure to lead to a full reshuffle. The Lib Dems made a strategic area by not having anyone head the five major spending departments (Health, Education, Defence, Work and Pensions, Justice) or the stratgic heart of government (Cabinet Office). Give Environment to Shapps and Laws can do Justice or Transport. Nick Platform 10

Since this low carbon rubbish is guaranteed to drive us bankrupt just why does it matter who replaces Huhne?

I was thinking a piece of rotten fruit on a stick, but on reflection any life on or in it may have some ethical basis for existing and science-based use. So not cabinet material.

The most obvious successor is Alastair Carmichael - desperately unlucky not to get the SS Scotland post when Danny Alexander moved to the treasury. He is the government Deputy Chief Whip (and hence the senior LibDem Whip) and a former leader of the Lid Dems in Scotland. Although seen as to the left of the party (as with Huhne) and a member of the left wing Beveridge Group, he is serving the Coalition government in a key area as a Whip and could have earned a promotion. He also wrote a chapter for Britain after Blair (the follow up volume to the Orange Book) on transport which shows his environmental and infrastructural credentials. If there is a vacancy, I would think he was a safe pair of hands who would work well with others and keep the balance of LibDems right at a critical time to ensure the party does not fracture further.

Doh! Carmichael wasn't actually leader of the libdems in Scotland, but I think the rest is right and he would stand a good chance of promotion as a safe pair of hands to keep the Beveridge left of centre LibDems happy.

More importantly, he's been one of the party's most senior modernisers for a long time. ----------------------------- Please, could we use less vaccuous terms? I do not know what that means? Is it a left/right thing? It seems quite loaded and biased term. I believe Herr Hitler could himself a moderniser. I have no idea from reading that of the politics of Ed Davey.

Greg Clark is another "nice" Tory, and would almost certainly have got Huhne's job after holding the Climate Change brief in Opposition, if Cameron had won a majority. But he can only have it if a mini-reshuffle is done instead of a straight libdem swap.