What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. It's a lovely thought, but in the case of Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce, you wonder whether it can possibly be true. How can they be feeling as they await sentencing for their pettifogging yet life-changing crime? Everything has gone: honour, role in public life and, worst of all in his case, relationships with their children. How do they get by from moment to moment? And can they recover?
Former Conservative minister Jonathan Aitken, who travelled this road 14 years ago, offered words of encouragement in the Daily Mail last week. "I have found in my own changed circumstances great happiness, fulfilment and peace," he wrote. He suggested Huhne – and presumably Pryce, too – should make themselves useful to their fellow prisoners, as he did, writing letters for the many illiterate inmates and helping those at an even lower ebb than themselves.
Aitken found God in prison and remade himself as a writer on Christian themes. He also found Ukip for a while, flirted with a political comeback, remarried and wrote a hagiographically inclined book about the president of Kazakhstan. In short, he remade himself, which proved relatively easy for one of life's meteors. It was just another part of a strange and sparkling journey, fascinating to observe but always likely to come down to Earth with a bump.
Former Conservative deputy chairman Jeffrey Archer, jailed for four years for perjury in 2001 over money paid to a prostitute, did not respond to his period of incarceration by finding God, supporting Ukip or remarrying. As far as one can see, he just carried on being Jeffrey Archer. He wrote a play, which ran almost in parallel with his trial, produced three volumes of prison diaries, retained his peerage and has continued bringing out a book a year. Prison was just another chapter in his outrageous story. He is nothing if not indomitable, and it constitutes a triumph of sorts. One of his books after leaving prison was The Gospel According to Judas, which may be telling.
The Conrad Black approach – continuing to protest your innocence after being convicted of fraud, raging against his formerly beloved US for imprisoning him and condemning its penal system – is not open to Huhne, who eventually pleaded guilty, but may appeal to Pryce, who went through two trials to try to prove her innocence. Black out-Archers Archer in refusing to be cowed or changed by prison (and incidentally also got to keep his peerage). In his telling, he is a hero in a fallen world. Everyone is in the wrong except Lord Black.
Start again or be even more like your old selves seems to be the choice facing Huhne and Pryce. John Profumo – yet another former Conservative minister – is the exemplar of the seek-redemption approach. In 1963 he was brought down by a famous sex scandal. In his case, he had committed no criminal offence, so did not face the indignity of prison. But he had spent three months trying to cover up his relationship with Christine Keeler – a delicate matter as Profumo was secretary of state for war and Keeler was involved at the same time with a spy at the Soviet embassy – so his reputation was shredded and his political career over.
These days Profumo would have a newspaper column and regular slot as host of Have I Got News For You. Contemporary culture makes no distinction between notoriety and fame. But back then the code of honour still counted for something, and he felt the need to make good his sins. He started work as a volunteer cleaning the toilets at Toynbee Hall, a charity based in London's East End. Aitken also spent time cleaning the toilets in prison – his fellow inmates joked that at last he was learning what it really meant to be a privy councillor. Life-changers welcome this act of abasement as the first step to learning humility.
Profumo worked at Toynbee Hall for 40 years, rising to become its president and, in the eyes of the world, redeeming himself. "No one in public life ever did more to atone for his sins; no one behaved with more silent dignity as his name was repeatedly dragged through the mud; and few ended their lives as loved and revered by those who knew him," said the Daily Telegraph in its encomium when he died in 2006.
It looks like a straight choice between Profumo/Aitken and Archer/Black, and most people, you feel, would be on the side of the redeemers. But does either approach really appeal? Refusing to admit that anything has changed just seems pig-headed, a case of pride coming after a fall. But finding God seems a little too convenient. And while doing good works is no doubt admirable, Profumo's championing of Toynbee Hall sat oddly with his lifelong membership of Boodle's and his high society connections (the Queen Mother was a close chum). Did he really want to change the world?
Huhne and Pryce committed a relatively small, bureaucratic crime. They are far less culpable than all the parliamentary expense flippers and fiddlers, many of whom still sit untroubled on the leather benches. Huhne's mistake was to go on lying about it even after he'd been found out; Pryce's was to allow jealousy to cloud her reason.
They should avoid self-pity. Lots of people get away with worse, but they didn't. That's life. They also have to take a deep look at what went wrong with their relationship. Huhne's political career is over, but he may find a role somewhere that doesn't involve cleaning loos. In any case, his real focus should be on repairing his relationship with his children. Pryce, too, needs to find some stability. If the Sunday Times journalist Isabel Oakeshott's account of her emotional fragility is to be believed, prison sounds like the last place she should be.
Neither public redemption nor a pugnacious facing down of the world is the answer. They need to make a series of private reconciliations, and come to terms with the ludicrousness of fate; the way everyday misjudgments and malignancies could end in such an epic fall. Finding God is too pat a response, but the Bible – in particular the book of Ecclesiastes – may be useful.
All is indeed vanity – the ministerial cars, the media attention, the mini-property empire. The sun rises and the sun goes down. Nothing else counts for much. And at least they didn't have to attend the Lib Dem spring conference, a punishment not even the meanest prison governor would impose. Maybe Nietzsche was right after all. Let's hope so.
