Labour’s Dover candidate: ‘I would not have stood under Corbyn’

Labour’s general election candidate for Dover and Deal has said he would not have stood for the party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

Mike Tapp, who is fighting to replace Tory defector Natalie Elphicke in the battleground seat, told The Independent he did not feel he could trust the former Labour leader on defence and security.

But the 39-year-old former soldier praised Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership and said now voters in the constituency “understand that Labour takes this seriously”.

Mr Tapp voted for Labour in 2019, adding that he “always votes Labour”. But he said: “I wouldn’t have stood under the previous administration… Coming from a military background, defence and security means so much to me and you have to be able to trust your government on defence and security.

“Any wavering around the nuclear deterrent or Nato for me is unsuitable.”

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The Independent visited Mr Tapp in the south east constituency, which sits on the front line of the small boats crisis and has been rocked by post-Brexit border chaos, with miles-long queues of lorries regularly bringing life to a standstill.

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Tapp accused the Conservatives of having left Britain with “open borders”. And set out how stints at the National Crime Agency (NCA) and Ministry of Defence (MoD) would help him play a part in Sir Keir’s drive to “smash the criminal smuggling gangs” bringing migrants across the English Channel.

Mr Tapp set his sights on the army as soon as he left school, spending a brief stint as a window cleaner before being admitted because of a past knee injury, but eventually being let into the Intelligence Corps.

He did three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before leaving the army to join the NCA, where he worked in counterterrorism. Mr Tapp moved from there to the MoD, also working on counterterrorism before leaving to pursue a career in politics in 2020.

He was selected as the candidate in Dover and Deal two years ago and has juggled door-knocking in the constituency with working for veteran Labour MP John Spellar ever since.

When it became clear Mr Sunak was calling a snap election on 22 May, Mr Tapp said it was a shock, but his campaign team were knocking on doors that evening, while he rushed down from London in time to hit the ground running the next morning.

While the Mr Tapp says the biggest issues voters bring up with him on the doorstep are the cost of living and the NHS, Channel crossings are a huge issue in the constituency, with migrants arriving from France typically landing or being brought ashore in Dover.

“We do have open borders, they are not secure,” Mr Tapp said outside the Popup Cafe on Deal High Street - flanked by his eight-year-old Rhodesian Ridgeback Scooby.

He pointed to the fact around 400 migrants crossed the channel in 2018, while 40,000 have made the crossing since Mr Sunak first promised to “stop the boats”.

“That says it all, doesn’t it?” he added.

Labour has promised to use new counterterrorism powers to tackle the gangs running the trade. It has also promised a new Border Security Command, which would bring together agencies including the National Crime Agency, Immigration Enforcement and MI5.

Mr Tapp said voters in Dover and Deal do not want “gimmicks” such as the Rwanda deportation scheme at the heart of Mr Sunak’s immigration plans.

He said Labour’s plan is “sensible and will have a massive impact”, adding that in his own stints working against criminals and terrorists he has “seen the difference those powers can make”.

“The criminal gangs should be running scared of a Labour government,” he said.

Critics of the plan say it does not do enough to address the numbers of people wanting to cross the channel, and that smugglers will simply find new ways of bringing people to the UK.

But Mr Tapp said it is possible to make it “unviable”. “We are an island, and we can secure this island from that sort of migration,” he added.

Mr Tapp said: “It does not make you a bad person to not want that sort of migration, there are genuine refugees who it is important we help.

“And we have to understand that economic migrants crossing for a better life are not necessarily bad people… but that does not mean we open the borders to everybody who wants a better life.

“It is horrible to say that, but we do not have the infrastructure to support open borders.”

Hoping to capitalise on discontent in Dover at Tory failures on immigration is Nigel Farage, who launched Reform UK’s election campaign in the constituency.

He unveiled Howard Cox, a former lifelong Conservative voter and motoring campaigner, as the party’s candidate.

But aside from a “small flurry” after the initial launch, Mr Tapp said the right-wing challenger party has not been mentioned on the doorsteps.

He will also have to beat Conservative candidate Stephen James, who is also a veteran but has attacked Mr Tapp for “never missing a chance to remind you” he served in the army. “I don’t need to rely on my military background because I’m too busy actually making a difference for veterans,” Mr James’s website states.

Mr Tapp went on to deny there was any bad blood between him and the retiring MP for the seat Ms Elphicke, who he has campaigned directly against for the past two years.

He said he was not “absolutely delighted” when he heard about the right-winger’s defection to Labour, but that it “sent a very clear message” to Conservative voters considering switching to Sir Keir’s party.

Mr Tapp has worked closely with shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper on immigration policy and is considered one to watch if he can overturn the 13,000 Tory majority in the constituency on 4 July.

He said he is “ambitious”, but that his first priority is to be a decent member of parliament for his constituents in Dover and Deal, adding that it would be “a real honour” to get a government post.

One of the key problems he wants to help a Labour government address is the chaos blighting Dover and Deal due to post-Brexit border delays. He said: “Two Saturdays ago it was gridlocked, it was the worst I and many others have seen. You could not get from Deal to the town centre in Dover, there were people stuck in their homes and businesses who had nobody in them.

“My worry is that in October it could be worse, also affecting Folkestone, Ashford and the Euro Tunnel.”

While polls point to a relatively comfortable win for Mr Tapp, he faces a difficult task to win over disillusioned voters.

Walking along the Deal seafront in the sun on Friday, 80-year-old Ken and 76-year-old Sue said they had been turned off the main political parties, with Ken saying he will back the Green Party in the election, while Sue said she is currently not planning to vote.

Ken said: “The conduct has been so bad, the level of truth telling has been appalling over the years and we have seen so many broken promises from the beginning.”

And Sue said: “I just think we have lost it… we are going to hell in a handbasket. I will decide on the day.”

Sue said the only thing she had been encouraged by were the local and international celebrations for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, but she said it was “bad, bad, bad” for Mr Sunak to leave halfway through to film an ITV interview.

“But what is the alternative, the other one [Sir Keir]? He is an absolute non-entity, he hasn’t got any ideas and he has only criticised the whole way through,” she added.

And Mr Tapp faces a challenge to keep left-wing Labour voters onside. Joanna Woodrow, 58, told The Independent she has backed the Labour Party for her entire life but considered voting Green because of Sir Keir’s lurch to the political right.

“I am less than happy with them because I think they are moving away from their roots… but I feel like I don’t really have a choice, a vote for the Greens would be a wasted vote in this constituency,” she said.

She said her support for the party was rocked by Sir Keir’s decision to welcome the constituency’s former Tory MP Ms Elphicke, describing her as a “dreadful woman”. But, while she is lacking enthusiasm for the party, she has concluded that Mr Tapp is a “reasonable bloke”.