I remember the first time I saw Dennis Skinner on TV. It was Treasury Questions in December 2005. Dennis made a comment about George Osborne’s drug use. It was cheeky ad hominem, but it contained a serious point: Osborne, the then-Shadow Chancellor, with his history of privileged debauchery, was a profoundly unserious man.

Although Dennis was ejected by the (lamentable) Speaker of the day, Michael Martin, it must’ve helped the Chancellor, Gordon Brown. During his time at university, Brown was an impatient scholar, researching the history of the Labour Movement in the 20s and 30s. Then there was Osborne, who, like so many foolish boulevardier at Oxford, attempted to portray himself as a rake. (Just look at his nauseating appearance in a picture of the Bullingdon Club in 1992.)

Osborne went on to become Chancellor, but after the referendum on the EU he resigned and took up a job editing a newspaper. He’d been an MP for eleven years, and for six of those he contributed to the ruin of the United Kingdom. All the while, Dennis sat there, speaking truth to power. When the Coalition government was formed, Dennis had a pop at one of Osborne’s then-colleagues, the Liberal Democrat David Laws:

“Can there be a more pathetic sight than this Liberal Democrat, who campaigned against cuts in 2010, now hammering the young and the old and putting people on the dole as a member of this rag-tag and bobtail government? Get out!”

Dennis was right. He was also prophetic: Laws would go onto resign and the Liberal Democrats, once all things to all people, whipped their MPs to support Tory austerity.

It was during the Coalition years where Dennis went from being a political inspiration to a hero. For two years I was an unemployed person with mental health issues. I was forced to undertake the government’s humiliating healthcare assessment to determine whether I was ‘fit for work’.

Despite my GP saying I wasn’t, the Department for Work and Pensions felt that an idle bureaucrat was better placed to measure someone’s abilities and health. The Labour frontbench’s response to the DWP was lacklustre. No, it was utterly shameful. Rachel Reeves would go on to say that Labour wasn’t the party for the unemployed. (Thanks, I thought.)

While the frontbench read their speeches written by West Wing obsessives, members like Dennis spoke for me. I became tearful when Dennis said this to the Prime Minister in October 2013:

“The Prime Minister will know of the many injustices that have been meted out by Atos in the past few years. They were mentioned again on Monday at DWP questions. The latest victim was a farmer and a butcher in Bolsover who went to Atos in December 2012 and was stripped of his benefit.

“For 11 months he waited for an appeal and then his aggressive cancer took his sight, took his hearing, and then last Friday took his life. Is it not time that we put an end to this system whereby people who are really suffering should not be allowed an appeal, having to live on £70 a week, for him and his widow?

“There are two things the Prime Minister should do: first, with immediate effect, make an ex gratia payment to his widow to cover the suffering, the pain and the loss of income, and secondly, abolish this cruel, heartless monster called Atos – get rid of it. It is not fit for purpose.”

Some people in politics, even in the Labour Party, chide Dennis, people who view politics merely in the prism of Ministerial Office and its execution.

What they fail to realise, is that for generations people who have been subjected to injustice have had Dennis on their side. The list of those who he has supported is very long, and I’m one of them. I mourn his loss as an MP, but I remember the lesson he taught: solidarity matters.