Migration minister Mike Tapp has sparked a backlash for echoing far-right talking points on child sexual abuse (CSA). But considering his links to the pro-Israel lobby, his divisive rhetoric is hardly surprising.
Nothing but a Temu Enoch Powell.
This rhetoric is straight out of the old fascist playbook.
Shame on you, and shame on this Labour government. https://t.co/cJi54AIQwm
— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) December 10, 2025
CSA is a stain on humanity. And its roots lie firmly in male-led power structures across all ethnicities and religious groups. But because governments have chosen not to implement expert recommendations or invest properly in preventing and tackling CSA, it has become a tool for far-right propaganda.
Rather than treating this important issue with the care it deserves, Labour’s Mike Tapp has instead been playing into the far right’s game — adding fuel to the fire. Speaking like a Reform UK politician, he has repeated over and over again the need to investigate “the impact of ethnicity, culture and religion“.
Has anyone thought of investigating the impact of ‘ethnicity, culture and religion’ of the people in the Epstein files with the crimes they committed?
All serious investigations into CSA are absolutely welcome. But Keir Starmer’s Labour clearly has an agenda of pandering to Reform. And in that context, it’s impossible to believe that Tapp’s careless comments are anything other than a conscious strategy to appeal to the far right.
This piece of propaganda in particular was a good example of that:
Deport. Deport. Deport.
We don’t want sexual offenders and violent criminals here. pic.twitter.com/PJg1agDipE
— Mike Tapp MP (@MikeTappTweets) November 1, 2025
Just as Donald Trump has couched his racism in ‘some are good people’ caveats, so has Tapp. But that doesn’t take away from his patronising, flag-worshipping agenda or his dirty attacks on those who disagree with it. Nor should it distract us from the ideologies behind his divisive mission.
Mike Tapp seems to love occupation, apartheid and genocide
Tapp hasn’t just voted to support Israel’s interests during its genocide in Gaza. He also has strong links to the pro-Israel lobby.
The “opaquely funded” Labour Friends of Israel lobby group, for example, named Tapp an honorary vice-chair in late 2024. That came a year after it had paid for him to visit the apartheid state.
Ahead of his election in 2024, Tapp also received thousands of pounds from donors like Gary Lubner. And he got £10,000 from dodgy right-wing outfit Labour Together, which toiled hard to undermine the Labour left under Jeremy Corbyn and replace it with Keir Starmer’s corporate cronies. Pro-Israel donors like Trevor Chinn played a key role in Labour Together‘s efforts.
Tapp had previously worked for longstanding Friend of Israel and fervent anti-socialist John Spellar, an ‘old right’ figurehead inside the Labour Party who reportedly maintains influence in Starmer’s government. Back in the 1970s and 80s, Jacobin has explained, Spellar had shown “a zeal for the dark arts“. People apparently called him “the scourge of the Left”.
Labour: ‘making the UK less attractive’
Tapp has insisted:
Whether we apply that to the UK or Labour itself, that seems like an appropriate tagline.
Because Starmer’s Labour, with people like Tapp at its heart, seems much more interested in sowing division than actually making anyone’s lives better in any meaningful way. And that’s hardly surprising considering who’s been forcing these cronies onto us, and whose interests they represent.
By Ed Sykes
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