Everybody needs to calm down. It may have appeared yesterday that Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner was on the brink. But you can all make a cuppa and put your feet up now.

Why? Because No. 10 in its almighty wisdom decided that this morning’s fulsome character reference would be best delivered by Rachel Reeves.

Rachel Reeves? Widely popular, wholly credible and economically unassailable, Rachel Reeves? Quite.

So now Ms Reeves has insisted she has full faith in Angela Rayner we can call it a day and draw a line under the scandal.

Except, not quite.

Ms Rayner appears on the brink this morning (Image: Getty)

The Chancellor told broadcasters this morning: “Yes, I have full confidence in Angela Rayner. She’s a good friend and a colleague she has accepted the right stamp duty wasn’t paid.

“That was an error, that was a mistake. She is working hard now to rectify that, in contact with HMRC to make sure that the correct tax is paid.

“Anyone that saw Angela’s statement yesterday, saw her interview yesterday, I think will have a lot of sympathy with some of the challenging family circumstances around this, around Angela’s disabled son, but of course, it is right that people pay their right amount of tax.”

Rachel Reeves, of all people, insisting that Ms Rayner’s underpaying of stamp duty was a mere momentary “error” is a bit like seeing your useless local GP receive a character reference from Harold Shipman.

Both of them are, as has been overwhelmingly proven over the past few months, unfit for their respective jobs.

Starmer’s government is once again in chaos (Image: Getty)

Both of them have, in excruciating scenes, now been reduced to tears in front of the nation’s cameras as they battle to save themselves, as the needs of the country take a back seat to their own careers.

As has been rightly pointed out, neither of them would have shown an ounce of sympathy were this a Conservative deputy prime minister embroiled in allegations of tax dodging.

Neither of them were sympathetic to Liz Truss or Kwasi Kwarteng when the pound started taking a battering and the cost of government borrowing soared. Regardless of whether Liz believed, as Rachel now believes, that she was doing her best for the country.

Even Tony Blair, a man from whom this government seems to lap up strategy and policy recommendations as if they were Moses with the Ten Commandments, warned Labour against getting on such a high horse about standards and ethics when they were in opposition.

“Be mindful when in opposition of making too much of too little when it comes to scandal,” the former Prime Minister wrote.

“It can be a boomerang, causing welcome damage on the way out, but inflicting harm on the thrower on the way back.

“There will be scandal. Don’t think for a moment there won’t, no matter how squeaky clean you think you are.”

To paraphrase with the words of Sith Lord Count Dooku: “Twice the pride, double the fall”.

Never forget that Labour, and Rayner more so than anyone else, brought this on themselves. They never had a shred of sympathy in opposition.

If both of them go at some point in the next year, no one will cry any tears other than Ms Rayner and Ms Reeves.