What an utter waste of time this has been. What a desperate, cynical frittering away of police resources in order to silence a political opponent. Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner was cleared by the police of any wrongdoing over her housing affairs yesterday. Months of pitiful journalistic attacks and craven police responses have produced absolutely diddly squat. They’ve accomplished the sum total of precisely nothing, except for a diminution in the reputation of everyone concerned.

It was perfectly obvious from the beginning that this was a plaintive cry for a scandal rather than a real one. The story began in the pages of Tory donor Michael Ashcroft’s book about Rayner. It raised questions about the sale of her council house in 2015 because of her living arrangements with her then-husband.

The Daily Mail then leapt on the story. She had bought the property for £79,000 and made a profit of £48,500, which would have been liable for capital gains tax if it was not her main residence. So the case centred on where she spent most of her time. There were frenzied, pitiful newspaper reports on old tweets when she had mentioned the word “home” – ignoring the fact that someone staying in two houses, as many early couples do, would happily use the term for either of them.

The story was never going to be particularly effective. It was too complicated and........

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