“I DON’T vote for Labour amendments. I’m a member of the Conservative Party and we are the ruling party at the moment”, (Echo July 25).

These twenty-two words by South Dorset MP Richard Drax sum up pretty much everything that is wrong with British politics. MPs blindly following their party leaders’ dictates irrespective of the benefits for the country and their constituents.

The United Kingdom is experiencing desperate times. Over 44,000 citizens are dead. A very real possibility exists that the Covid-19 second wave will happen this winter and that it will be worse than anything we have seen so far. It is already happening in Iran where daily deaths from the second wave are far exceeding those of the first wave with no working vaccine available until at least 2021. Covid-19 is very similar to the ‘Spanish Flu’ that killed over 230,000 UK citizens in the second wave of 1919 after a mild and barely lethal first wave.

Despite being the 21st largest country by population, the UK has suffered the third greatest pandemic death toll due to the Government’s failure to lockdown earlier, its failure to supply sufficient PPE to its key workers, its discharge of Covid-19 infected elderly patients from hospitals into care homes and its incompetently late implementation of a working Trace and Track system.

The economy is in a frightening state with millions unemployed, millions more facing redundancy and Government Covid-19 support borrowing running at over £11,000 per household. The UK is facing possibly the greatest threat to life and wealth since 1945.

What we need now are MPs with the moral strength to do what is right for the country and their constituents irrespective of their political party allegiances. We need the best of our politicians to come together and use their talents to save our country for all its citizens to the best of their abilities irrespective of their political parties.

What we have got are a large clique of self-serving, brown nosing MPs putting party allegiances before the well-being of UK citizens as they walk like a flock of bleating sheep through the voting lobbies.

I sincerely hope that voters in South Dorset remember Richard Drax’s appalling quotation above at the next election.

Geoff Kirby

Weymouth