Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Chris Huhne is beginning his second tilt in two years at the leadership of the party.

Given that he has only been in the Commons since 2005 that in itself is remarkable, and perhaps a sign of recent volatility in politics and his party.

Huhne was among the 25 MPs who refused to work under Charles Kennedy after he confessed to his drink problem in January last year, and first offered to support Sir Menzies Campbell for the succession before throwing his own hat into the ring.

The last contender to emerge, he later became the bookmakers' favourite and ended up in a strong second place with 42 per cent of the vote.

Having used the campaign to urge radical reform of green taxes, he was promoted from number two on the Lib Dem Treasury team to the environment portfolio.

Huhne has since played up his green credentials, taking the lead on some of the few Lib Dem policies - such as taxes on gas-guzzling vehicles - to have punched through the media's lack of interest in the third party.

In 2004 he was a contributor to the controversial Orange Book, a series of essays from the right of the party advocating free market economics.

The 53-year-old remains a libertarian and a decentraliser, and as a former MEP - elected for a seat in the South East in 1999 and again in 2004 - is a committed Europhile.

Educated at Westminster School, the Sorbonne and Oxford, he has a first in philosophy, politics and economics and found time to edit the university magazine Isis. At the time he was a member of the Labour Party.

After graduating in 1975 he became a journalist, and was made Brussels correspondent of the Economist at the age of 23.

He was later leader writer and economics editor at the Guardian, City editor of the Independent, and in 1994 began a five-year career as an investment analyst, from which he is reported to have made a significant amount of money.

A founder member of the Social Democratic Party, he stood unsuccessfully for election in Reading East and Oxford West and Abingdon in 1983 and 1987.

He is MP for Eastleigh, a satellite of Southampton and a key Lib Dem- Conservative marginal. Huhne will hope that becoming leader will boost his less-than-comfortable 568 majority.

He will have to defend the seat against Tory candidate Maria Hutchings - the mother of an autistic son who famously told Tony Blair he was talking "rubbish" in a TV studio.

Huhne has been dubbed Gordon Brown to Nick Clegg's Blair, and the similarities between the two - who went to the same school before becoming MEPs and with European wives - are likely to be repeatedly referred to during the leadership contest.

He has three children and two grown-up stepdaughters with his Greek-born wife Vicky, an economist and civil servant.