Downing Street has officially entered the absolute clown zone. A massive public slap-fight has broken out between Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and her junior Immigration Minister, Mike Tapp, and it is every bit as embarrassing as you would expect from a lame-duck administration in its final days of coping. Tapp went completely rogue, writing an unauthorized op-ed in the Times demanding care workers get a free pass on immigration rules, and Mahmood is absolutely losing her mind over it.

On Thursday, Mahmood demanded that Prime Minister Keir Starmer sack Tapp immediately for violating the holy scripture of the Ministerial Code. But because Starmer has zero authority left as he prepares to hand over the keys to Andy Burnham on July 17, No. 10 refused to do anything, muttering that "no decision" had been made. Seeing that his boss has no teeth, Tapp decided to double down and roast the Home Secretary on X while vacationing in California.

Posting from a wedding in San Francisco—complete with a humblebrag about the Golden Gate Bridge being hidden in the fog—Tapp posted: "Ok, morning all. It’s gone from ‘he broke the ministerial code’ to ‘he stole my idea’." He bragged that he had "the receipts" to prove he was working on the policy first, and ended the post with a legendary level of sass: "I won’t be intimidated to drop my views. Stay classy!"

This whole drama is basically a petty high school fight over who gets to sit at the cool kids' table in Andy Burnham's prospective administration. A source close to Mahmood leaked that Tapp only wrote the article to "try to win a job in the new administration." Even worse, they are accusing Tapp of straight-up stealing the care-worker policy idea from internal meetings and passing it off as his own homework to get clout in the media.

Meanwhile, the rest of the cabinet is trying to cope with the absolute meltdown of their authority. Justice Minister Jake Richards had to go on Times Radio and practically beg everyone to calm down, saying the Home Office needs to "take a deep breath." He called Tapp's public blogging "not particularly wise," which is polite politician-speak for "this guy is completely out of control and making us look like amateurs."

At the end of the day, this is what happens when a government completely breaks down. You have junior ministers flexing on Twitter from overseas weddings, ignoring their bosses, and fighting over who gets to suck up to the next prime minister, all while the actual borders and immigration rules are treated like a secondary concern. Stay classy, indeed.