Since parliament returned this week, the gross injustices and inequalities that should haunt our national conscience are once again taking a back seat as MPs continue to wade through the resource-sapping Brexit quagmire.

Nearly three years after the UK voted to end its 40-year membership of the European Union, in the biggest democratic exercise in a generation, the debate continues to rage. The bitterness of that campaign, which so divided the country and communities, has not gone away. But the reason it continues to fuel such anger is that it struck a chord with communities who for too long have felt held back by a political class that has too often taken them for granted, and an economic system that works against them.

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The truth is that much of Britain was on its knees long before membership of the EU was put to the voters in 2016, with austerity, poverty and lack of investment ravaging our country. In the last years of the 20th century, hundreds of cities, towns and villages saw the industries around which they had flourished disappear.

As if losing the reason for their very being wasn’t enough, decades of neglect and the march of technology entrenched the rot. High streets have been decimated not only by the loss of local employment but the birth of out-of-town and online retail. In all communities, pubs and clubs have continued to close apace. Lack of government investment in public services has seen schools, hospitals and councils pushed to the brink of collapse.

In these communities, warning of a catastrophic economic shock is met with derision. Many of them have been in a state of depression since the 1980s. The Labour government of the late 1990s and early 2000s did much good with investment in public services and people, but, sadly, nothing changed structurally.

As Westminster ties itself in knots over Brexit, the lack of action to tackle the extreme poverty in this country described by the UN special rapporteur last year is astonishing and deeply shameful. That report showed the appalling situation the country is in. It said that 14 million people, more than a fifth of the population, live in poverty, with 1.5 million destitute and various sources predicting child poverty rates as high as 40% by 2022.

As Philip Alston, the special rapporteur, put it: “For almost one in every two children to be poor in 21st-century Britain is not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one.”

The voices of doom during the referendum did little to quell the appetite for the change many sought in 2016 and still seek. The same arguments used in the remain campaign are being replayed again, by the same people and often using the same rhetoric. The irony of the same people who led that campaign now claiming Jeremy Corbyn cannot win an election is frankly astonishing.

Theresa May has spectacularly failed to deliver a Brexit deal that will meet the needs of our country. Her attempts to revive her categorically rejected deal seem to have about the same chance of success as the kiss of life would have on the T rex exhibit at the Natural History Museum.

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We should not forget that every Labour MP was elected on a manifesto that pledged our acceptance of the result of the referendum. Labour believes that a different deal can be secured. One that puts jobs, workers’ rights, and environmental and consumer protections at the heart of our future negotiations with the EU. That is why we have tabled an amendment to the EU withdrawal bill this week.

The amendment matches the unanimous policy of last September’s conference almost word for word, including, if all else fails to break the deadlock, the option of a public vote. However, we should be in no doubt that asking voters to vote again on an issue to which they have already given an answer, until they come up with the right answer, risks serious damage to the relationship between many citizens and politicians at Westminster.

A radical, redistributive Labour government is the answer to the woes of our country and for our communities, not rerunning a divisive campaign that seems likely to deliver the same result again and do nothing to answer the demand of a country crying out for real change.

• Ian Lavery MP is chair of the Labour party