Angela Rayner row was bad enough - then Labour wrote its own suicide note

By any measure, the Government's attempts to defend the indefensible position in which Angela Rayner landed herself over the last couple of weeks have been lamentable. On Friday, after nearly two weeks of bluff and bluster and flim and flam, the Housing Secretary experienced her own eviction - and rightly so. Her attempt to bend the rules over the purchase of her seaside apartment turned into an end of the pier show for 'our Ange.'

Tellingly, her swift demise from supposedly being the second most important elected politician in the country to being a national laughing stock has been mirrored by the catastrophic decline in any respect for the Prime Minister and his allies. Consider this: Labour's defence strategy rested in part on this being an unfair attack on Rayner as she is "northern and working class."

Talk about a suicide note! Did it not occur to the skinny latte drinking, bento bowl munching leftist elite who control Labour that they have managed to grossly disrespect most of their voting base?

Northern, working class and Labour go together like bread and butter or fish and chips. Or in this instance, stamp duty and dodging.

My late mother was raised in Leicester but moved there at the age of four having been born in Barrow-in-Furness and there is no way on God's good earth she would have attempted to swerve paying a tax that was rightfully due.

While sadly I never knew her father, I have extremely fond memories of my Lancashire-born grandmother and can be equally adamant she would have been the same.

And don't let the other chaff being fired out by everyone from Sir Keir Starmer and Number 10, to the Chancellor and other senior cabinet colleagues about this being based on inaccurate advice or a genuine mistake or to do with a property held "in trust" deflect you from the truth: Angela 'Blamer' was caught with her manicured nails in the cookie jar and tried to blag her way out.

Are we really meant to believe that if any of us found ourselves in conflict with a body such as HMRC or our local council we'd be able to get away with saying it's all down to duff advice?

That the person at the very top of the housing department was unable to comprehend how it worked is beyond laughable. How on earth can a woman bright enough to get to the role of Deputy Prime Minister not be able to follow guidance on her own departmental website?

Meanwhile, fellow ministers such as her hapless housing colleague Matthew Pennycook as well as Stephen Kinnock and Stephen Morgan have been corralled into offering fulsome support and have actually told me on air "there is no story here."

Between them, they'd struggle to edit a bus ticket.

One factor yet to be fully addressed is the lasting damage done to her boss, the Prime Minister. It is chilling that the man supposedly running the country saw fit to abrogate responsibility as to whether his immediate deputy stays or goes to a third party, the ethics watchdog.

And this from the man who - God forbid - would have ultimate responsibility as to whether to fire nuclear weaponry.

You have to wonder how many reviews, commissions and government advisers would Sir Keir require to authorise that?