A wise man once said “if you want loyalty, buy a dog,” and nowhere is that phrase more apt than in politics. Sir Keir Starmer left Downing Street for the final time today, just two years after a landslide Labour win. The round of applause he received as he left the building towards the podium was heartening, until you remembered that the same people cheering were the ones who forced him out.

Similar scenes were seen last week in PMQs with Labour bankbenchers shedding crocodile tears that would have made some in the North Korean politburo blush. Had somebody awoken from a two year coma in time to catch the spectacle, they might have thought that Starmer had been an unrivalled success.

For all the tears on the backbenches, the fact remains that Labour MPs backed a horse in 2019 after the disaster of Jeremy Corbyn and bottled it when things got difficult.

Like Julius Caesar he was stabbed in the back by some of those he counted as allies, several of whom stood behind him as he said his goodbyes to the nation.

It was telling that his Chancellor Rachel Reeves stood front and centre to mark the end of a premiership she had a heavy hand in wrecking.

The winter fuel debacle, chaos over welfare reform and a refusal to fund defence were each a wound that bled his time in office to death.

Tellingly, she was unable to clear her diary in order to support her boss when he announced his intention to resign, in a move widely interpreted as an attempt to distance herself from the Labour bin fire in a bid to be kept in government by Andy Burnham.

Funnily enough, she was free enough to get herself in Burnham’s cringey selfie in parliament later that day after he was sworn in as the MP for Makerfield.

Perhaps in the intervening time, she has realised that her chances of maintaining her place in cabinet were slim, so now she is attempting to shape her legacy in charge of the nation’s finances.

In a disloyal profession, Reeves’s political manoeuvring as her former boss fell on their shared sword was something to behold.

Reeves will go down in history as the first woman to hold the chancellorship and will rightly be remembered as a trailblazer in public life.

But she will also be remembered as a poor occupant of No 11 Downing Street, who lied about raising taxes, strangled farmers, pubs and small businesses and failed to do anything to kick start growth.

Much of the above was unrectifiable by the time Starmer announced his decision to resign. What she could have controlled was the way in which she handled his departure.

Instead of loyalty and contrition, she chose to play political games and put herself first. Given this government’s track record, perhaps that shouldn’t come as a surprise.