This morning, on the first day of a new year, I woke up with a certainty. It is time for me to go.

Because no one cares, because I am not elected, because I represent nobody and am morally responsible only to myself; because of the unique weighting on my own small balance; it is time — for now — to pack up Labour with the Christmas decorations. It is time to put accommodation away.

For too long, I have been staying out of dishonesty, telling myself that it is better so.

It is never better.

If you can’t be something, be honest. If you can’t be honest, be nothing at all.

So here’s a little toe-in-the-water honesty to start with.

I have been thinking about leaving Labour for months. Throughout those months I’ve asked — almost begged — hundreds of friends to stay.

It was what everyone seemed to expect me to say.

What started as a small, not uncomfortable, hypocrisy became a large one. At some point, I stopped being ashamed of wanting to leave, and started to be ashamed of not wanting to go.

I didn’t expect to leave Labour in my life again. It is a decision I can make only because I have not promised to serve anyone. If I were a Labour councillor, a Labour MP, an office holder in my CLP; I would act differently.

I don’t think I would feel differently.

And yes, I have struggled with the moral sense of it. Responsibility against responsibility. The responsibility of my heartfelt Labour beliefs. The responsibility to fight and to oppose, against the responsibility of someone who now funds and colludes with a Labour being reshaped against effective opposition; someone who colludes with a Labour reshaped to collude.

A party reshaped in the interests of a hard-left minority.

I do not want to see Jerusalem builded here, in the shape of Mao’s red book. The grey chill of Corbynism frightens and disturbs me. I have seen Libya and lived in the German East, and I am frightened by the visions held before us. I am frightened by the blindness of those who take the socialism of the 1980’s for their model.

I am frightened by the license offered to the Conservatives so that Labour will fail.

I am frightened by the depth of a hypocrisy which would abandon any attempt to find positive answers, and allow Britain to be broken so that we can look away from the responsibility to fix it.

Political parties are bent and shaped by their masters. I am frightened by the slow filtering of our masters’ views through a party that I loved when I joined and fear as I leave. I am disturbed by what I hear from within our new structures: from the leader’s office, the rebalanced NEC, Momentum.

I hear talk of escalating bullying and it tells and frightens me most of all. The sanctioned distress in the interests of a horrible politics; the hard left, the local useful abuses. Labour’s past, and our temporary future.

Most of my friends who have left, have left quietly. They continue to work for and to speak for Labour; for a sort of version of Labour that the party itself has left behind.

Quietly, they continue to speak for a sort of moderate, restrained and responsible Labour, divided into thousands of little flames, and put carefully by.

To leave quietly is a morally responsible position. It is not one morally open to me. For three years I asked — I demanded — that people vote, join, give their money and time, to Labour.

Those who joined quietly have the right to leave quietly. I spoke up and don’t. So, I have woken up to my leaving. If I am wrong, I’ll be honestly wrong.

And in the meantime? I’ll give my dues to charity. I’ll campaign no less than I did before; to hold my values no trace less strongly.