Very serious error means Angela Rayner's future is out of her control

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 lifelong 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.

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.