Immigration Minister Mike Tapp has publicly apologised after posting and rapidly deleting a tweet in which he appeared to compare pressure from his boss, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, to his experiences fighting the Taliban.
Tapp, a former soldier and MP for Dover and Deal, posted on X words to the effect of “I’ve seen off the Taliban and taken out terrorists. Country first, always,” in an apparent response to what he described as “attempted intimidation” from Mahmood. The post was deleted almost immediately, but not before it had been seen and shared widely online.
In a subsequent apology posted on X today, Tapp described the tweet as “poorly judged” and acknowledged it “could be misinterpreted,” adding that he has “a lot of respect for the Home Secretary.” The climbdown appears to be an attempt to de-escalate a row that has rapidly become one of the most public ministerial disputes of recent weeks.
The fallout began after Tapp wrote an unauthorised opinion piece for The Times in which he argued that migrant care workers should be given special exemptions from Mahmood’s immigration overhaul. The article was published without permission and was seen as a direct breach of collective ministerial responsibility. Mahmood is reported to have asked the Prime Minister to sack Tapp for breaching the ministerial code. Tapp pushed back, saying publicly that he “won’t be intimidated” and that he has “receipts” demonstrating the ideas in the article were his own rather than leaked government thinking.
The episode has put Tapp in an increasingly difficult position, with the apology over the Taliban comparison coming on top of the existing threat to his ministerial career.
