Six weeks ago, I was working as a plumber in people’s houses. Now, I’m here in parliament. To call it a culture shock would be an understatement.

It’s easy to see why a lot of MPs don’t understand how hard things are right now. This place is a bubble. And there just aren’t enough of us here who get it; who come from working-class backgrounds, who’ve had ordinary jobs like me.

The fact is, most people are struggling right now. Too many people I speak to say the same thing – they know they’re never far away from things unravelling even further. The washing machine breaks, they get a parking ticket, or their hours get cut at work, and the whole house of cards collapses. There’s nothing left to cut back on.

I don’t think that’s something most MPs understand. They might think they do, they might say they do, but they don’t properly know how it feels in your bones. As I said when I was elected: working hard used to get you something. Now we’re all working harder than ever, but we’re still struggling to afford the absolute basics.

Take energy, for example. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran means that energy bills are set to rocket this summer, by more than £330 a year. But the government is refusing to commit to universal support. The Green party is clear: ordinary people should not pay for this crisis. The government should guarantee right now that it will not allow energy bills to rise beyond the April-June price cap, and every single pound of reckless profiteering by energy companies must be repurposed to this end.

Or water. Our already extortionate water bills in England and Wales went up by an average 5% this week , while sewage continues to be pumped into our rivers. Most people see that privatised water companies are taking us for a ride and want them renationalised, a longstanding Green party policy. But the government refuses to even consider it.

And on the two-child benefit cap, I welcome the fact that it is finally set to be scrapped next week. But Labour should have done this on day one. Instead, 330,000 children were kept in poverty just because they had more than one sibling. That’s years of additional suffering, which Labour could have prevented, for what? There is no justification.

Yet, even now, Labour ministers haven’t properly learned their lesson. They’re still refusing to scrap the household benefit cap meaning 140,000 children will continue to be penalised simply because they are part of a larger family.

It’s baffling to me that Keir Starmer and his cabinet can be so unimaginative and lacking in boldness right now. All they need to do is look at how angry people are, look at how much their constituents are suffering, look at the mood of the country. Maybe they don’t understand it. Maybe they just don’t care.

• Hannah Spencer is the Green party MP for Gorton and Denton

Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd.