pip install itself fails with "No module named 'distutils'"

I use Windows 11 and Python 3.12.5 64-bit, installed from
https://www.python.org/downloads/ />

I'm trying to install requirements from some repo, but this fails:
PS C:\Data\Repos\myrepo> pip install -r .\requirements.txt
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 198, in _run_module_as_main
File "", line 88, in _run_code
File "C:\Users\jonathanb\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Scripts\pip.exe\__main__.py", line 4, in
File "C:\Users\jonathanb\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\cli\main.py", line 10, in
from pip._internal.cli.autocompletion import autocomplete
File "C:\Users\jonathanb\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\cli\autocompletion.py", line 9, in
from pip._internal.cli.main_parser import create_main_parser
File "C:\Users\jonathanb\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\cli\main_parser.py", line 7, in
from pip._internal.cli import cmdoptions
File "C:\Users\jonathanb\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\cli\cmdoptions.py", line 18, in
from distutils.util import strtobool
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'distutils'



From several questions on this site (best one) I understand distutils was removed in Python 3.12, and if I want to use them I should run pip install setuptools. I tried that, and it failed the same way.


So question: How can I use pip to restore requirements?