2020-09-30 Issue with setuptools and pip

I got the following error which I resolved by updating setuptools. But quite a difficult error message to interpret.

File "python3.7/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pep517/wrappers.py", line 265, in _call_hook
    raise BackendUnavailable(data.get('traceback', ''))
pip._vendor.pep517.wrappers.BackendUnavailable: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "python3.7/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pep517/_in_process.py", line 86, in _build_backend
    obj = import_module(mod_path)
  File "python3.7/importlib/__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1006, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 983, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 953, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 219, in _call_with_frames_removed
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1006, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 983, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 967, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 677, in _load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 728, in exec_module
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 219, in _call_with_frames_removed
  File "python3.7/site-packages/setuptools/__init__.py", line 5, in <module>
    import distutils.core
  File "python3.7/site-packages/_distutils_hack/__init__.py", line 83, in create_module
    return importlib.import_module('setuptools._distutils')
  File "python3.7/importlib/__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'setuptools._distutils'