Confessions of a new intake Labour MP: 'We're not here to make friends'

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

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🗓️ 17 July 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

Keir Starmer has struck again. Compounding his reputation as a ruthless operator – like Michael Corleone – he is settling all family business by removing the whip from a number of troublemaking MPs, including Neil Duncan Jordan, Chris Hinchcliff, Brian Leishman and Rachel Maskell. This comes after each led respective revolts on winter fuel, planning reform, Grangemouth and the welfare changes. Rosena Allin-Khan, Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Mohammed Yasin have all lost their trade envoy roles too.

Many of the MPs who have been cast adrift are from the new intake, and so today we are joined on the podcast by Mike Tapp, MP for Dover and Deal, to give his reflections on a year in office. On the podcast: he offers James Heale his advice on stopping the boats; details how Labour can start to deliver tangible change for people in constituencies much like his own; explains why Keir was right to suspend his fellow MPs; and gives us an insight into the future Labour stars from the new intake.

Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

We are hosting a Coffee House Shots live tomorrow (15th July) at The Emmanuel Centre in Westminster. Join Tim Shipman, Michael Gove and Isabel Hardman to debate: Are the Tories toast? Click here for tickets.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The economic tumult of the past month has forced many people to take another look at their finances and whether their retirement plans are on track.
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0:37.4	And remember, investment
0:38.7	involves risk.
0:43.7	Hello, welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Hill. I'm joined today by Mike Tapp, who's
0:47.8	the new Labour MP for Dover and Deal. Mike, that's coming on. It's a pleasure. Thanks for
0:51.9	having me. No worries. It's a year on since your election, 12 months on, you boy in Parliament, biggest ever new intake, 335 new MPs. Tell me what
1:00.2	surprised you, what must enjoy about Parliament? What are the up and down? I, in all honestly,
1:05.5	love it. And you can tell those that do. In fact, I was saying before, a lot of it is about making sure you are prioritising correctly,
1:13.9	because you could, you know, spend all week on just one topic area, meeting with lobbyists and, you know,
1:20.5	trying to keep everybody happy. And you learn quite quickly that you can't. But I have really enjoyed it.
1:26.1	I found before the election,
1:30.0	I was working for John Speller for a couple of years after I left the Ministry Defence. And that
1:34.6	was very helpful because he's a bit of a font who really did sort of make me understand about
1:42.0	prioritising so that you can have as much of an impact as you
1:45.0	possibly can from the back benches.
1:47.3	It does, it did strike me and still does sometimes how little power you do have on the
1:51.6	back benches.
1:52.6	You know, that balance between government and council and you kind of sit in the middle
	...

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