Starmer had picked Siddiq's replacement before she quit

The Daily Mail got half of what it wanted. Its front page yesterday morning was Two Lame Ducks”, and called for the resignations of Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, and Tulip Siddiq, a junior minister in Reeves’s Treasury.

- JOHN RENTOUL

Reeves came out fighting in the Commons, delivering a confident defence of herself and her policies, and making Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, look a little foolish. Stride had no alternative policy to propose, but he had some Shakespearean flourishes: “To resign or not to resign, that is now the question,” he said.

It turned out that this was a question for a different minister, who was at that moment putting the finishing touches to a resignation letter, while No 10 was finalising the announcement of a new economic secretary to the Treasury and a promotion from the back benches.

The operation was carried out with speed and some precision. Laurie Magnus, the prime minister’s adviser on ministerial standards, carried out his investigation more quickly than journalists expected, and Siddiq was allowed to resign to avoid further “distraction from the work of the government”.