During my last advice surgery of the year, just before Christmas, and a woman walked in with her six-year-old son, who has spina bifida and uses a wheelchair. They live with the boy’s father, brother and sister in a first-floor flat. Every day his mother has to carry her son up and down the stairs, on her back, to take him to school.

It’s my job to help her. Now, after 22 years as an MP, and 15 years before that working in housing, I know all the people I can go to. I hope I’m up there with the best of MPs on how to get things done for their constituents, but I can’t conjure up houses. Last year my local council, Merton in south London, had 240 properties for 10,000 families on their waiting list, only one of which had four bedrooms. So it is unlikely that this family will move before the lad becomes a teenager. Sad to say, this is not the worst case I’ve had.

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It’s hard to work out which is. But a strong contender must be the parents living in a single room with their two boys of six and 13, the youngest of whom has not learned to walk, owing to the lack of space, leading to a diagnosis of “development delay”.

The little difference I have made is often through help from local community groups and charities willing to provide support for some of life’s basics. But while what they do is great, and helps get families out of debt or provides a bed or a fridge, these groups can’t build homes. Only the government can make that happen.

The public aren’t blind to this. Everywhere I go, residents talk to me about the state of the country and what can be done. I mean everywhere – in shops, at school gates, on the doorsteps and at bus stops. Even during a cold, dark election most residents kept me talking as the freezing chill swept in to their homes through their open doors as whole families struggled with their voting decision. Few willingly voted for Boris Johnson and the Conservatives, but many told me they couldn’t under any circumstances elect Jeremy Corbyn.

We don’t need to overcomplicate this. The answer is simple, and more Labour MPs need to speak about it. We need the Labour party to get on the side of the people and become electable – but we can’t turn the Labour party around on our own because there aren’t enough of us.

As we enter 2020, it’s time for people who can’t bear seeing young people sleeping in doorways or who believe that no elderly person should spend hours on a hospital trolley to get active.

That’s why it’s time to make your new year resolution to join the Labour party, so you have a vote on choosing the next leader. If you want a credible alternative to the Tories, do what you need to do. Help reclaim Labour.

• Siobhain McDonagh is the Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden