When John Profumo had to resign due to scandalous behaviour, he famously went to clean lavatories. Angela Rayner, by contrast, has been up to goodness knows what. Perhaps she’s been clothes shopping, appearing as she did today in the house, for the first time in ages, wearing an identical suit to Rachel Reeves.

As the disgraced former deputy prime minister rose to speak, Labour MPs let out an almighty yell of approval. The last person to give Angela Rayner a cheer like that was probably her mortgage lender. A vast number of MPs had turned up to give their support – including what looked like half the cabinet’s big guns, if you can call them that. There was Reeves, in her solidarity power-suit, Bridget Philistine, even Rayner’s successor, the Sage of Tottenham, had arrived to give his bles

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