ENERGY Secretary Chris Huhne has admitted that voters in his Hampshire constituency who backed him to keep the Conservatives out of government may have been disappointed by the result.

But Mr Huhne, Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh, denied that voters were misled after his party formed a coalition with the Tories, handing David Cameron the keys to Number 10.

At this year's general election, in May, Mr Huhne increased his majority over the Conservatives from 568 votes to 3,864. It is thought that significant numbers of Labour supporters may have voted for him to help keep the Tories out of power nationally.

Addressing a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference in Manchester today, Mr Huhne acknowledged that some voters may have been disappointed by the outcome.

He said: "Inevitably in a system like ours there are going to be places like Eastleigh where everybody knows it is a close contest between Liberal Democrats and Conservatives and people may well have voted for me in order to keep the Conservatives out. In terms of Eastleigh we did keep the Conservatives out.

"On a national level, I don't think we can be accused of misleading anyone because we said all through the election campaign that we would talk first with the party with the largest electoral mandate - the most votes and the most seats - and that is precisely what we did."

Mr Huhne said the alliance with the Tories did not mean the Lib Dems were ruling out co-operation with other parties after future elections.

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He said: "Three-party politics is here to stay. Sometimes that will mean that there is a coalition between Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, sometimes between Liberal Democrats and Labour and sometimes it may even mean Labour and Conservative.

"Each Parliament is going to be dealt with in its own right. We will, in my view, be in coalition with an agreed programme with the Conservatives until the next election, and at that point we will fight as an independent party with a programme which we will put forward which will be quite distinct from the programme of the Conservatives or Labour.

"We will go into that election without any preconceptions about what the result will be."

Mr Huhne also revealed that he shared "a lot in common" with Ed Miliband, and suggested the new Labour leader would not rule out co-operation with the Lib Dems in future.

He said: "I think he has a lot to offer and he is not instinctively the sort of tribal politician who will attempt to pull up the drawbridge. Given where we are in British politics, I think that's a good thing."