{"id":25673,"date":"2013-02-04T13:31:23","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T12:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.co.uk\/2013\/02\/04\/chris-huhne-resigns-nick-clegg_n_2614514.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-politics?ncid=GEP"},"modified":"2013-02-04T13:31:23","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T12:31:23","slug":"clegg-i-am-shocked-and-saddened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/clegg-i-am-shocked-and-saddened\/","title":{"rendered":"Clegg: &#8216;I Am Shocked And Saddened&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p>Nick Clegg said on Monday he was &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/redirect.viglink.com\/?key=11fe087258b6fc0532a5ccfc924805c0&#038;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fuk%2F2013%2Ffeb%2F04%2Fnick-clegg-chris-huhne-plea\" >shocked and saddened<\/a>&#8221; by Chris Huhne&#8217;s dramatic guilty plea to perverting the course of justice.<\/p>\n<p>But the Liberal Democrat leader said the former energy secretary had taken the &#8220;right decision&#8221; to step down from Parliament in light of the admission.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/redirect.viglink.com\/?key=11fe087258b6fc0532a5ccfc924805c0&#038;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fuk-politics-21322136\" >Clegg<\/a>, who is expected to make a full statement soon, said: &#8220;This is obviously an extremely serious matter and it&#8217;s essential that the legal process is now allowed to run its course.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am shocked and saddened by what has happened, but I believe that Chris Huhne has taken the right decision in resigning as an MP.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Huhne narrowly lost out in the Lib Dem leadership race in 2007 and many believed he still had a chance of supplanting an embattled Clegg.<\/p>\n<p>When Huhne was forced to resign as cabinet minister, Clegg was granted a temporary reprieve from the challenge to his leadership.<\/p>\n<p>It was assumed Huhne would fight the charges against him and make a return to front-line politics.<\/p>\n<p>A conviction for perverting the course of justice puts any leadership hopes to rest as well removing a significant threat to Clegg&#8217;s leadership.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pixel.quantserve.com\/pixel\/p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nick Clegg said on Monday he was &#8220;shocked and saddened&#8221; by Chris Huhne&#8217;s dramatic guilty plea to perverting the course of justice.<br \/>\nBut the Liberal Democrat leader said the former energy secretary had taken the &#8220;right decision&#8221; to step down from Parlia&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-25673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}