in part on Huhne's position on the Trident nuclear programme. In the last week of campaigning, his team were bullish about his chances, predicting a win. In the final count, the party membership chose his rival Nick Clegg by a narrow margin of 511 votes out of more than 41,000 counted. About 1,300 postal votes were caught up in the Christmas post and missed the election deadline. An unofficial check of the late papers showed Huhne had enough votes among them to hand him victory. Huhne stood by the result, saying: "Nick Clegg won fair and square on the rules counting the ballot papers that arrived in by the deadline. There is no question of any re-run." Following the leadership election, Clegg chose Huhne to be the party's Home Affairs Spokesman. Election conduct During the leadership election, Nick Clegg registered a formal complaint about Huhne's conduct to Chris Rennard, the party's Chief Whip and returning officer. Clegg stated that his rival was indulging in: "the politics of innuendo, mounting false challenges and running a campaign that is handing political ammunition to the party's political opponents." Huhne and Clegg were debating on live television on BBC's The Politics Show on Sunday 18 November 2007, when presenter Jon Sopel produced a briefing document that had been specially delivered to the show's production team by the Huhne campaign team on the preceding Friday. The document excoriated Clegg on a number of policy and political issues and was titled "Calamity Clegg". When challenged about the document, Huhne claimed that he had no knowledge of it and said he did not agree with the document title but agreed with the points within it. Asked how it was possible that he had no knowledge of such a major document sent to the producer of the show he was due to appear on, Huhne replied: "It's quite impossible to check everything that goes out of the office... But I can assure you that's not had my authorization." After Clegg complained about what he called "dirty tricks" and other senior party members condemned the Huhne campaign attack, Huhne's campaign manager Anna Werrin claimed that the title of the memo was just the product of an "over-zealous researcher" and had not been seen or approved by Huhne or any senior campaign officials prior to release. "The document title had not been approved before the document was sent out and