VICKY PRYCE, convicted yesterday of perverting the course of justice, has paid the price for seeking revenge for her husband's infidelity. That's the view of most commentators as they digest the downfall of the 60-year-old economist and mother-of-five, who revealed only after Chris Huhne left her in 2010 for his mistress Carina Trimingham that she, Pryce, had taken speeding points on his behalf in 2003.
Carol Sarler in the Daily Mail: "On charges of treachery she was guilty, guilty and guilty again. She betrayed her sex, she betrayed her stellar career and, to a degree somewhere beyond conscience, she betrayed her children. During it all, it was the savagery of her vengefulness that shocked us to the core... No other woman scorned has left us, frankly, ashamed of our own sex."
Allison Pearson in the Daily Telegraph: "Hell hath no fury like a woman whose man leaves her for a lesbian twice her size [Trimingham is bisexual]. Once Pryce had let the genie out of the bottle over an emotional lunch with Sunday Times political editor Isabel Oakeshott [the journalist who broke the story], there was no getting it back in."
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Gaby Hinsliff in The Times: "'He made me do it'. It's the plaintive lament of the powerless down the ages, the cry of the weak surrendering to the strong. Vicky Pryce wasn't superwoman, her barrister told the jury at her first trial, in a striking echo of Cherie Blair's coy explanation all those years ago for how she ended up unwittingly buying two flats in Bristol with the help of a convicted fraudster."
Andrew Pierce in the Daily Mail: "While desperate to ruin her former husband, Pryce was canny enough to realise that her scheming might reflect badly on her. Yet ultimately her obsession with bringing down Huhne outweighed concerns about her own reputation."
Zoe Williams in The Guardian: "Over seven years, nothing jogged her position on this [keeping quiet about taking Huhne's speeding points] until her husband's affair. Which makes it look a little like revenge, a dish, like vomit, best not eaten at all; it doesn't matter what temperature it is."
Dominic Casciani for the BBC: "The couple - a genuine definition of a power-couple - were divided over an affair and the bitter recriminations that followed. Today they are united in very public misery."
Mary Dejevsky in The Independent: "The case that concluded yesterday will be recorded in court documents as Regina v Vasiliki Pryce and Christopher Huhne. It might more accurately have been described as Pryce v Huhne and, as such, confined to the divorce court. This use of judges' time says almost nothing about the dishonest practice of 'taking points', but an awful lot about men and women behaving badly."
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