OVER the past five years I have knocked on thousands of doors in Enfield as a councillor and heard about how Tory austerity is damaging lives. 

I have sat in surgeries with mothers and young children in despair as they face eviction under impending universal credit. 

What a difference from when I moved to Enfield more than 15 years ago, when homelessness in the borough was a relative rarity. 

I and my comrades have strived as councillors and party members against the brutality of austerity and we will continue to do so. 

The immovable object in all of this is that we do this as Labour members and the one thing I know is that the people of this borough and beyond need Labour MPs standing up for them every single day. 

Therefore, what Joan Ryan and other MPs have done in defecting to hold hands with Tories has deeply saddened me. 

Despite recent divides, any Labour MP, no matter where they sit in the party, is preferable to a Tory. 

At the very least they will be likely to take seriously the mountains of casework which comes across their desk. 

I know this only too well from my regular advice surgeries; it is the bread and butter of being an elected representative. 

Of course some Labour MPs, including Ryan, made it clear from day one back in 2015 that they were totally opposed to Jeremy Corbyn — a Labour leader democratically elected with an unprecedented mandate. Not once, but twice. 

In effect these MPs have spent much of the last three years fighting the leader of our party when they should have been focusing on how to bring about a transformative Labour government. 

Labour is so much bigger than one individual, no matter whether that is the leader of the party or the local MP. That is our strength and it had been decades in the making. 

After all, we are not only a party but a movement responsible for the greatest social changes this country has ever seen. 

The departing MPs cite anti-semitism as a reason for their departure, and I completely agree that we must stamp out this form of racism where it exists in our party, politics and wider society. There is absolutely no place for it in our movement. 

However, those of us deeply committed to a transformative Labour government — one which really changes Britain economically and socially for the many — will always take the view that it is better to fight from the inside. 

Therefore Ryan and other MPs who have left the party should do the decent thing and call a by-election if they are so sure of the platform on which they now stand. 

Sadly they will, in coming days and weeks, seek to work against the very party that has given them every opportunity they have ever had. 

That will not do. One thing is for sure — politics will not stand still and the Labour Party in Enfield will not stand still. 

We will continue the fight against austerity, universal credit and homelessness without our erstwhile MP. The people of Enfield North and beyond deserve nothing less.