Home Office left in chaos as Keir Starmer refuses to sack junior minister who Shabana Mahmood has accused of disloyalty

By JASON GROVES, POLITICAL EDITOR Published: 19:54, 25 June 2026 | Updated: 19:55, 25 June 2026 Keir Starmer is locked in an extraordinary stand-off with Shabana Mahmood after he blocked her request to sack the immigration minister. The Home Secretary asked the PM to sack Mike Tapp over an article in which he called for foreign care workers to be excused from her latest immigration crackdown. Sources close to Ms Mahmood claimed the ambitious minister had taken ideas she was considering and ‘briefed them as his own to try to win a job in (Andy Burnham’s) new administration'. Ms Mahmood believes his article in the Times breaches the requirement for collective responsibility in the Ministerial Code. The Home Office told reporters that Mr Tapp ‘is expected to be sacked for breaching the Ministerial Code’. But No 10 said Mr Tapp, who has acted as a cheerleader for Sir Keir in recent months, ‘remains in post’. The PM is said to be furious with Ms Mahmood after she told him to quit in the wake of last month’s disastrous local elections. A senior Labour source said Sir Keir had even considered sacking Ms Mahmood last month before being warned it could collapse the government. Whitehall sources said Mr Tapp had not even been referred to the PM’s adviser on the Ministerial Code, Sir Lawrie Magnus. Sir Keir is the ultimate arbiter of the code. Standoff: Keir Starmer has refused to sack a minister Shabana Mahmood accused of disloyalty In the balance: Mike Tapp's future is now the subject of a Whitehall power struggle Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: ‘The Labour government has descended into chaos and infighting - with Shabana Mahmood’s junior minister openly defying her in a brazen attempt to get a place in Burnham’s cabinet. ‘There is not a single thought for the national interest here. All these Labour ministers care about is their own personal ambition and jockeying for government jobs. It’s beneath contempt.’ Mr Burnham has signalled he supports the broad thrust of Ms Mahmood’s efforts to control immigration. But he is under pressure from Labour MPs to water down her plans to extend the threshold for claiming indefinite leave to remain (ILR) from five years to 10 for the wave of migrants who arrived following the pandemic. In his article for The Times, Mr Tapp revealed that he had been working to ‘develop a better approach than a blanket retrospective extension from five years to ten years for everyone’. He wrote: ‘It is my strong belief that those who have come to the United Kingdom on care worker visas who have played by the rules and have genuinely contributed to our care system should not be required to wait longer to apply for settlement. That is the issue I am working hard to address.’ He said that the exemptions to the ILR changes would apply to all those who came on the health and care visa route, which saw a total of 616,266 issued between 2022 and 2024. More than half of them were family members of workers, known as dependants. Analysis by the Home Office and its migration advisory committee has estimated that about 200,000 care workers and their dependants will apply for permanent settlement between now and 2030 if the five-year route remains unchanged. A Government source said: ‘The Home Secretary has asked the Prime Minister for Mike Tapp to be sacked for breaching the Ministerial Code.’ Mr Tapp was asked to comment but did not respond. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy.