Michael John Gapes (born 4 September 1952) is a British former politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Ilford South from 1992 to 2019.

[7] Gapes was a founder, member, and convenor of the Clause Four Group in 1974, and the sixth Chair of the National Organisation of Labour Students from 1976 to 1977, taking over following the defeat of the entryist Trotskyist Militant tendency.

[10] He told The Guardian that working with Neil Kinnock "to bring the Labour Party back from the abyss of 1983" was most influential in his political thinking.

[15] In Parliament he joined the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in 1992 and, after the 1997 general election, he was appointed as the Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office Paul Murphy; he also worked for the other Minister of State Adam Ingram until 1999 when he joined the Defence Select Committee.

[22] In 2007, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee reported that it was "unlikely" any abuse was continuing at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp since 2004, calling the facilities "broadly comparable" to HM Prison Belmarsh.

The images from 2002 were of Camp X-Ray and that is now shut",[23] adding that an immediate shutdown of Guantanamo Bay would lead to a release of individuals back into society who were "dangerous".

[25] In 2008, as chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Gapes met with the Dalai Lama and asked his opinion on human rights in Tibet.

[30] On 18 February 2019, Gapes and six other MPs—Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie, Angela Smith, Luciana Berger, Gavin Shuker, and Ann Coffey—quit Labour in protest at Jeremy Corbyn's leadership to form Change UK.

[31] For Gapes, foreign policy differences were the major factor, accusing Corbyn in his resignation letter of taking the "wrong side on so many international issues from Russia, to Syria, to Venezuela.

[40][41] In 2018 Gapes supported a call by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee for an independent inquiry into "the consequences of non-intervention" by Britain in the Syrian civil war.

[42] Gapes later criticised Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for apologising for the Iraq War,[43] and argued that the Middle East is better off following the British and American interventions.

[44][13] However, the Foreign Affairs Committee under his chairmanship argued for a re-evaluation of the "special relationship" between Britain and America and criticised Blair's closeness to the American president George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks as damaging to British interests.

[45] Gapes is staunchly pro-European, once declaring that he would prefer closer ties with the European Union, rather than Britain becoming an amusement park for American and Japanese tourists.

[47] In December 2017, Gapes delivered a speech to the House of Commons in which he warned that Brexit would put the production of Baileys Irish Cream, the milky whiskey liqueur, in jeopardy.

[48] The speech, in which he explained how Baileys is produced, was described by Patrick Maguire in the New Statesman as "infinitely memeable" and as giving Gapes "a bizarre online infamy".