Rachel Reeves is guilty of carelessness and hypocrisy

The chancellor Rachel Reeves's defence for breaking the law is that she made an "inadvertent mistake".

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She did not know, she told Sir Keir Starmer, that she was supposed to buy a licence to rent out her home in south London when she and her family moved into Downing Street.

Except the next day, it emerged that her husband, who had dealt with the letting agent, was told about the requirement for a licence. Not only had she broken the law, but she had misled the prime minister about it. "Inadvertently", of course, according to The Independent.

It says nothing complimentary about the chancellor of the Exchequer that she failed to pay sufficient attention to the detail of her own financial affairs. She should have checked that her legal obligations had been met, rather than relying on the letting agent's assurances to her husband.

And she should have established the facts in full before assuring Sir Keir on Thursday that there was, in effect, "nothing to see here".

Equally, the prime minister was at fault for accepting her initial account of the oversight so quickly, and for failing to insist that Sir Laurie Magnus, the adviser on ministerial interests, spend more than a few minutes investigating what had happened.