The real tragedy is that with Whitehall and Parliament so consumed with Brexit for the next 10 years, we will have no capacity to address these problems.
London and the South East are the only regions where GDP per person is higher today than it was in 2007. Everywhere else, people are worse off than they were before the credit crunch.
Our economy is an hour glass, with the middle section hollowed out.
The middle rungs of the ladder – the breadwinner jobs that paid enough to raise a family on have disappeared. We now only have an asset class and an under-class.
Poverty is no longer an issue that afflicts the workless. More than half of all people who are in poverty – 7 and a half million in our country – are in a working family.
Real wages have fallen by 5% since 2009. And at the same time, the average property owner in London makes more money per year from the increased value of their home than the average London salary.
I will not take lectures about listening to left behind communities.
I have seen two riots in a generation in Tottenham.
My constituents have borne the brunt of austerity since 2010, and it is they who will pay the price of a hard Brexit.
Child poverty is at 40%. The council spends £20 million a year on bed and breakfasts just to keep families off the street.
So I will not betray my constituents by standing by and staying silent as this recklessness drives our economy off a cliff.
Members opposite have been dreaming of a low-tax, low-wage, low-regulation offshore tax haven for decades, and now they have it in their grasp they salivate at the thought of us becoming the new Singapore.
I will not stand with them.
If we let the Prime Minister pursue this reckless course – this Brexit at any cost – we know that as always it will be the poor, the weak and the vulnerable who suffer.
The referendum was not simply the rebellion of working class Labour heartlands that has been portrayed.
52% of Leave votes lived in the South of England. 59% were middle class. 58% of those who voted Conservative in 2015 voted Leave in 2016.
Colleagues on these benches must remember who the Labour Party represents – the very people and communities who will pay the price. This is not the time to stay silent or fall into line.
How can you walk into the voting lobby shoulder to shoulder with the party of Nigel Farage and the very people whose vision of society we all went into politics to oppose?
And as for Members opposite. Where are you? Where are your better instincts? Why have you rolled over and given in to the hard Brexiteers, who have always been on the fringes of your party but who have never, until now, been in the driving seat?
This is not a time to put self-interest or party interest ahead of the national interest. There is too much at stake.
Let me finish by asking just one simple question, once asked by one of our most celebrated Parliamentarians.
“Is it prudent, is it even possible, however much we might desire it, to turn our backs upon Europe?”
When Churchill spoke those words, he was talking about appeasement and he was going very much against the prevailing wind. The same is true today.
Patriotism requires more than blind faith. We must remember our history, our values, what we represent and what we stand for. Most of all, we should remember what we stand against.
For all of these reasons, and for the sake of the country that I love, I will be voting against the triggering of Article 50.