A political row inside the British government has sharpened into an open confrontation between two ministers, with the Home Secretary now formally asking the Prime Minister to sack one of her own team. According to the report, the request marks a significant escalation of a dispute that has dominated the political conversation and looks set to rumble on through the weekend.
At the centre of the affair is the immigration minister, Mike Tapp, who wrote an opinion piece in The Times setting out his own views on policy. The problem, according to a government source, was that he did so without the knowledge or agreement of the Home Secretary or her team, in effect freelancing on an area of work she had been handling and presenting it publicly as his own.
The government source set out a series of pointed accusations. By acting as he did, the source said, Tapp had broken collective responsibility and breached the ministerial code, the rules that bind members of the government to act as part of a single team. The source added that he was now threatening to leak sensitive documents, and it was on that basis that the Home Secretary had asked the Prime Minister to remove him from his post.
Tapp, a former soldier, has appeared to relish rather than retreat from the confrontation. He has been active online replying to people commenting on his posts, and in one reply he wrote that the attempted intimidation was quite a sight, adding that he had seen off the Taliban and taken out terrorists, with the words country first, always. He later deleted that particular message, even as the row over his conduct continued to grow.
Other figures in government have been drawn into the argument. The Justice Minister, Jake Richards, speaking publicly, suggested that what Tapp had been saying was not particularly wise, stressing that ministers should not freestyle and that the government works as a collective effort. At the same time he was careful to note that any question of sanction was ultimately a matter for the Prime Minister.
For all the heat around the affair, the final decision rests in one place. The impression at Number 10 is that the threshold for a breach serious enough to warrant a sacking may not have been reached, which would make it unlikely that the Prime Minister moves against a minister seen as broadly loyal to him. With the Home Secretary pressing for his removal and Tapp showing no sign of backing down, the standoff looks set to keep dominating headlines.