Not yet.

My mother died forty years ago yesterday. It was Good Friday. And forty years ago today, Saturday 14th April 1979, I went out to campaign for the Labour Party.

At the time, the immediate response when I turned up at the committee rooms was that I didn't need to be there. Nobody doubted my commitment to the cause but that at a time like this I should be with with friends and family. What they didn't understand was that those with whom I'd shortly head off to Paisley Town Centre, equipped with stickers, balloons and leaflets to carry the doomed cause of Jim Callaghan were, in a very real sense, my friends and family.

For more than thirty years the Labour Party was my life after I joined between the February and October 1974 elections. Almost exactly forty five years ago just now. Conferences, rallies, campaigns, elections and, of course, endless (just) "meetings". I have friends from various sources. My job, of course; St Mirren, certainly: but overwhelmingly from the Party. Some have held the highest office in the Westminster or Holyrood Parliaments. Others been prominent figures in local government or the trade union movement. Many however have been content to be humble activists. Many have now left but many more still remain. The phrase "Comrades and friends" ,with which I have heard so many speeches commence, has a real resonance for me. Still does.

But increasingly I have wondered whether some of those who flocked to "our" banner over the last four years are people who I would want as either my comrades or my friends.

Personal bereavement aside, 9th April 1992, when we lost that year's General Election, was probably the most miserable evening of my life. A long, long battle, internally and externally, to restore the Party to nationwide electability had fallen, undeservedly and, to me at least, unexpectedly, at the final hurdle. Neil Kinnock as PM, John Smith as Chancellor. That would have been some team.

I was never entirely resigned to what happened after that for, while I recognised the imperative to win, I always felt that too many compromises were being made on the way. Nonetheless I was proud of the many, many achievements of the three Labour Governments which followed, scarred only by the disastrous decision to support the invasion of Iraq, which I marched against and indeed over which my wife, Maureen, who I had met through the Party, resigned her own membership.

I was always for Brown over Blair and pleased when that succession occurred. When Brown fell, I voted for Ed Balls and then Ed Miliband as his successor for I thought the Party needed to move moderately to the left on economic policy. I would still regard myself as on the left of the Labour Party I once joined.

But I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that that Party no longer exists.

Since Maureen has been ill, now for more than ten years, activism has had to take second place to other responsibilities, so I watched with horror but from afar as the disaster of the 2015 leadership unfolded. I knew exactly what Corbyn's politics were, for they had always existed on the fringe of our Party. Anti-western, at best indifferent to democracy in many parts of the world, and with the whole thing held together with dubious associations and a willingness to embrace conspiracy theorising at the drop of a hat. All summed up in his immediate response to the arrest of the suspected rapist, Julian Assange, a man who is in no way a figure of the traditional left but "at best" a nihilistic facilitator of populism, whatever its colour. For this issue alone I would regard Corbyn as being entirely unfit to be Prime Minister. And there are many others.

But he did, undoubtedly, build a coalition of the angry, attracting to our Party an impressive, on one view, number of new members holding views similar to his own. Including people with no previous associations with our Party and, indeed, in many cases active membership of rival parties on the fringe left. Including, it is now also clear, a good number of whom are enthusiastic anti-Semites. And this was then compounded with a contagion of nepotism and patronage within the Party and among "new media" outlets where anyone willing to say "Yes comrade, no comrade, whatever you say comrade" finds themselves promoted, indeed often employed, with no regard to their ability or even basic honesty. Often even without regard to their previous political sympathies.

This has been hitched to an economic policy based on fantasy numbers and which, when you drill down, amounts to little more than running a siege economy. Which is why it was rejected by Labour in Government as long as 1976. Never mind a return to the untramelled Trade Union power, exercised  with our without democratic mandate, which brought that very Government to its knees.

Excepting 2017, I have campaigned in every election of my lifetime for a Labour Government with greater or lesser enthusiasm but always with a desire for victory. I could not do that for a Corbyn premiership. Indeed , I would regard such a development as a disaster for the Country.

So why don't I resign? As so many have. It is unlikely now than more than 50,000 of those who were in the Party in 2010 are still in membership. Most recently we have lost one of our very best prospects for the future here in Scotland, in the person of Cat Headley.  Partly I have stayed because I had previously the "get out of jail free" card that Corbyn could never possibly get elected. That's still broadly my view but the chaos of the Tories and the potential splintering of their electoral coalition raises the possibility of a Labour Government with as little as third of the popular vote. Possibly even willing to concede a second referendum to the SNP in pursuit of an absolute majority.

So, to be honest, it is partly because there is not, yet, a viable alternative not just to the Tories but to a very nasty version of the Tories. For whom I could never vote. Even I would rather have Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.

The decision of the Libs and Tigs to stand against each other at the European Elections is a farcical one, guaranteeing, under the electoral system in use, only mutually assured destruction. But it shows the difficulty of "breaking the mould" (to use a phrase) of the two Party system, not just because of First Past the Post.

But abandoning "the" Party is also because it is just a really difficult thing to do personally, for the reasons with which I started. Not least because I would feel I was abandoning those who had, even now, decided to stay. Would probably always stay. Many, many good people among then.

However, that notwithstanding, believe me, if a viable alternative was to emerge, then I'd be for it. Although I still suspect the day I left would still be an even sadder one than 9th April 1992.