I’ve interviewed Angela Rayner a number of times and know her to be a robust operator with a very thick skin.
But on Wednesday morning, as she walked into our interview to admit that she had underpaid tax on her Hove home and explain the personal circumstances around that, she was visibly upset.
For days, this story has run on and now we have a better picture of why. The deputy prime minister told me she had to ask for court permission to release details of her domestic arrangements to give the background to the tax trouble she now finds herself in. And on Wednesday, she revealed all.
Politics latest: Why the deputy PM nearly resigned
It is a complicated and personal story, but in essence, her family had a trust set up in 2020 to provide for her son who has life long disabilities to ensure that he would be provided for and protected.
When she divorced her husband in 2023, some of the interest in the family home was transferred to the trust and then in 2025, she sold her remaining interest in the property to her teenage son’s trust.
She then used the proceeds from that to buy the new property in Hove, using the money from her family home in Ashton to pay the deposit.
Angela Rayner’s explanation for stamp duty error not the end of the matter
Angela Rayner’s tax affairs statement in full
Angela Rayner a ‘great British success story’, says PM after tax affairs row
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Ms Rayner says she was advised that the home she bought was liable for the standard rate of stamp duty. It now turns out that advice was wrong and she owes tens of thousands in underpaid tax, because Hove is classified as her second home rather than her main residence.
She says it was a genuine mistake and has referred herself to the PM’s independent standards commissioner and informed HMRC. She says she will pay any additional tax owed.
The deputy PM was clearly upset in our interview by having to disclose private details about her teenage children.
I was left in little doubt that she had felt forced to share information about them that she really didn’t want to share.
She also admitted that she had discussed packing it all in with her ex-husband and children rather than putting this personal stuff into the public domain, but her family wanted her to go public to answer media reports that she had acted in a “hypocritical way”.
Read more: Angela Rayner a ‘great British success story’, says PM
“We felt that under the circumstances that having that reputation, for me as their mother, was more damaging than correcting the record on what we were trying to do,” she said.
But this is much more than just trying to save Ms Rayner’s reputation. Her political career is on the line, and, at the moment, it is unclear whether she will be able to continue as deputy prime minister.
She told me in our interview that the prime minister “knows the circumstances” and “knows the challenges that my son has faced and the background to all of that”, and it is now for the PM’s independent adviser on ministerial standards, Sir Laurie Magnus, to look at the evidence that she was advised she did not have to pay a stamp duty surcharge.
He has a reputation for being quick and if he finds Ms Rayner broke the ministerial code, it will be hard to see how Sir Keir Starmer will not accept that advice.
Follow our channel and never miss an update.
On top of that, HMRC is also investigating the deputy prime minister and if she is found to have been careless around her tax, she might face a penalty on top of the stamp duty owed, which will again put her under huge pressure.
There is also the political fall out for a politician who has gone in hard on Tories over tax questions for years.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Defending her from the attacks that are now surely to come is going to burn through a lot of political capital of a government already in trouble. Will her colleagues around the cabinet table and on the backbenches have the stomach for it?
When I asked her in our interview whether she really believed her position was sustainable, given she had underpaid on tax and that she was the housing minister, she told me that she hoped “people can see what has happened and see that I wasn’t trying to dodge tax”, and when she realised that advice was inaccurate she “took immediate steps to do the right thing -you should pay the tax that is owed”.
“Hopefully, people can see there isn’t any intention to deceive, to avoid, to be hypocritical in the way in which I have conducted myself,” she said.
Be the first to get Breaking News
Install the Sky News app for free
Ms Rayner is never far from the headlines and has often found herself under fire in her political career, rising to the second most powerful office in the country from the most humble of backgrounds.
But she knows too that despite complicated family issues, she has made a very serious error indeed and one which she would have been quick to criticise had the perpetrator been a political opponent.
She has come out fighting today, but whether she can survive is now beyond her control.
