GARY MUNDELL gives an interesting quote in the letter headed “Politics debate” (HAS, May 9) when discussing people who vote the same way as their father and grandfather.

Well certainly not me; my family have always voted Conservative. I turned to Labour after discovering the hard way that Conservative governments ruin people’s lives.

Our exchanges on social media over the government’s erratic response to the coronavirus pandemic are not for the faint hearted.

Mr Mundell asks me to explain how the referendum on the EU was farcical. With pleasure. In 1995 I purchased a CD called Help. This is not a Beatles album, but a various artists CD to raise funds for the War Child charity helping children in war torn Yugoslavia.

This CD has no track listing, one buying it cannot see what music is on it.

I bought it because I wanted to support this cause; however one would not normally buy a CD if one didn’t know what was on it.

When the referendum took place in 2016, the decision of how the UK would leave the UK in the event of a leave vote had not been taken.

Whether there would be a hard or soft Brexit, whether the UK would remain in the customs union, or whether we would leave with a deal at all.

Leave won the referendum, and consequently what happened next in Parliament was shameful.

The referendum result should have been incontrovertible, but because the right questions had not been asked at the right time it wasn’t.

Leaving the EU was therefore unfair on remain voters, however at the same time remaining in the EU or holding a second referendum was unfair on leave voters.

In this mess which Labour MPs shouldn’t have found themselves in, they did their duty. This wasn’t their mess, it was David Cameron’s mess.

My paternal grandmother found out a long time ago that I am descended from the family of Guy Fawkes. Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted as the government have done with coronavirus, is like handing me a keg of gunpowder.

Jeremy Whiting, Great Lumley.