Angela Rayner came out fighting in our interview – but her future is now out of her control

Published

2 months ago

September 3, 2025

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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.

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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”.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

Politics

Starmer avoided political heat at home during Brazil climate conference – but he returns to a prisons crisis

Published

2 hours ago

November 9, 2025

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Starmer avoided political heat at home during Brazil climate conference - but he returns to a prisons crisis

Sir Keir Starmer’s been on the other side of the world for most of the week – at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, his 40th foreign trip in 16 months.

Back home, his government’s credibility has continued its painful unravelling.

Five days on from David Lammy’s disastrous stand-in performance at PMQS, the justice secretary’s ministerial colleagues are still struggling to explain why he repeatedly failed to answer questions on whether another migrant criminal had been released from prison by mistake.

Yes, Conservative MP James Cartlidge got the question wrong, as Brahim Kaddour-Cherif was an illegal migrant, not an asylum seeker.

But Mr Cartlidge argued that because the deputy prime minister failed to divulge the information he did have, he failed to act with full transparency and should be investigated by the PM’s ethics advisor for a possible breach of the ministerial code.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has been defending Mr Lammy’s response.

She told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips she doesn’t accept that he was being evasive, insisting Mr Lammy had been carefully weighing his words to ensure that “when we do speak about matters of such significance to the public… we do so with care and make sure the full facts are presented”.

At that time, rather extraordinarily, we’re told the justice secretary did not have the full facts of the case, even though the Metropolitan Police had been informed the day before (six days after Kaddour-Cherif was accidentally freed).

How Sky correspondent found escaped prisoner

The combination of wrongly-freed prisoners and illegal migrants is a conjunction of two of the most toxic issues in British politics – the overflowing prison system and the dysfunctional asylum system.

Both are vast, chaotic problems the government is struggling to get a grip on, as the Conservatives also found, to their cost.

But ministers’ ongoing failure to bring both issues under control has only been highlighted by Mr Lammy’s sloppy handling of the situation.

Football regulator donations row

Ms Nandy has herself been at the heart of another government controversy this week – over the appointment of the new football regulator, David Kogan.

An independent investigation found she “unknowingly” breached the code on public appointments by failing to declare that Mr Kogan had previously donated £2,900 to her Labour leadership campaign – and also criticised her department for not highlighting his status as a Labour donor who had previously given £33,410 to the party.

The culture secretary has apologised and explained she had been unaware of the donations.

She also pointed out that Mr Kogan was a candidate originally put forward by the Conservatives. But again, it’s messy.

It’s yet another story which chips away at the government’s promises to clear up politics and act with full transparency and accountability.

Budget blues?

The ultimate breach of trust looks set to come with the budget on 26 November, however.

In an extraordinary early morning speech this week, Chancellor Rachel Reeves signalled that she’s likely to raise taxes in two and a half weeks – and thus breach the core promise of the Labour Party manifesto.

The rationale for her dire warnings on Tuesday was to start explaining why she will probably have to do so – getting in her excuses early about the languishing state of the economy as a result of Brexit, Donald Trump’s tariffs and her inheritance from the Conservatives.

The Tories claim Ms Reeves could sort out the finances by cutting welfare spending – something ministers dramatically failed to do when their efforts at reform were scuttled by angry backbenchers.

Governments breach their manifesto commitments all the time.

But if the chancellor goes ahead and puts up income tax, as expected (even if that’s offset, for some, by a corresponding cut to national insurance), it will be a shock – and the first such increase in 50 years.

The new deputy leader of the party, Lucy Powell, pointedly warned the government this week about the risks of breaching trust in politics by breaking manifesto promises.

Lisa Nandy didn’t shoot her comments down when Sir Trevor asked for her response, arguing instead that while “we take our promises very, very seriously”, they [Labour] “were also elected on a promise to change this country”, with a particular focus on fixing the NHS.

The impossibility of doing both – protecting taxes while also increasing government spending in such a challenging economic climate – highlights the folly of making such restrictive promises.

But voters are not in a forgiving mood.

Politics

Trump announces $2,000 tariff ‘dividend,’ here is how it will affect crypto

Published

6 hours ago

November 9, 2025

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Trump announces ,000 tariff 'dividend,' here is how it will affect crypto

United States President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that most Americans will receive a $2,000 “dividend” from the tariff revenue and criticized the opposition to his sweeping tariff policies.

“A dividend of at least $2000 a person, not including high-income people, will be paid to everyone,” Trump said on Truth Social.

The US Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments about the legality of the tariffs, with the overwhelming majority of prediction market traders betting against a court approval.

US Government, United States, Donald Trump — *Source:* *Donald Trump*

Kalshi traders place the odds of the Supreme Court approving the policy at just 23%, while Polymarket traders have the odds at 21%. Trump asked:

“The president of the United States is allowed, and fully approved by Congress, to stop all trade with a foreign country, which is far more onerous than a tariff, and license a foreign country, but is not allowed to put a simple tariff on a foreign country, even for purposes of national security?”

Investors and market analysts celebrated the announcement as economic stimulus that will boost cryptocurrency and other asset prices as portions of the stimulus flow into the markets, but also warned of the long-term negative effects of the proposed dividend.

The proposed economic stimulus will boost asset markets, but at a steep cost

Investment analysts at The Kobeissi Letter forecast that about 85% of US adults should receive the $2,000 stimulus checks, based on distribution data from the economic stimulus checks during the COVID era.

While a portion of the stimulus will flow into markets and raise asset prices, Kobeissi Letter warned that the ultimate long-term effect of any economic stimulus will be fiat currency inflation and the loss of purchasing power.

“If you don’t put the $2,000 in assets, it is going to be inflated away or just service some interest on debt and sent to banks,” Bitcoin analyst, author, and advocate Simon Dixon said.

“Stocks and Bitcoin only know to go higher in response to stimulus,” investor and market analyst Anthony Pompliano said in response to Trump’s announcement.

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