'A new way of thinking is struggling to be born'

Labour is a zombie party of old men and old women, having betrayed the young, enthusiastic membership that gave it life in 2011. Fianna Fail is talking about maybe staging a comeback at the general election after next - or perhaps the one after that.

Party hacks and media pundits are jabbing at their calculators, trying to make the numbers add up to a government. What the hell happened? they ask.

It's just a heartbeat ago that Enda had it all sewn up. Labour dumped Gilmore and replaced him with Burton, who would - we were assured - win back the support that drifted away.

Enda floundered in Irish Water; Burton was as transparently pointless as Gilmore. Suddenly, the Government was stumbling from one crisis to the next, leaking support as its cronyism and deceit and arrogance were made plain.

A homeless man died in a doorway, on the verge of Christmas, and suddenly - instantly - an emergency forum on homelessness was held. The kind of thing that usually takes months to organise - or years - in a political world that has no end of long fingers on which to put social problems.

Promises were made of immediate action, to the amazement of social activists whose warnings have been ignored for years.

The Taoiseach went visiting homeless people and proclaimed himself shocked - shocked - at the state of the society he helped fashion in his 39 years in the Dail.

And everyone knew that none of this is about the homeless. It's about scared politicians covering their arses. They can't afford to have another poor soul die in the vicinity of their plush workplace this winter.

It's too embarrassing.

Don't mention rent controls, rent supplements, the consequences of the juvenile obsession with encouraging a bubble market in property - just get the potential embarrassments off the street.

Thirty-nine years. No other obvious ambition but to protect 'the seat', and to follow the party line.

When trouble came, the instinctive deference to the bankers, then bowing and scraping to the likes of Trichet and Draghi. On their orders, bailing out not just the Irish banking clowns but the German and French banking clowns, too.

Shredding health and education, taking the hard line with victims - whether the Hep C victims in the past or the symphysiotomy victims today. Thirty-nine years helping to make this country what it is, and then he's shocked at what he sees on the streets.

In 2011, the talk from the media and party professionals was about how long before Fianna Fail recovered, how Fine Gael and Labour mightn't get along, and how deep Mr Kenny should bow when he met the Troika.

All superficial stuff - about the process of party fortunes, not the purpose and aspirations of politics.

On the night of the election, before a vote was counted, poet Theo Dorgan went on RTE and said clearly what some of us were thinking. His comments were quoted in this column the following Sunday.

"I think we're going through a great change. The Irish people have dealt the first decisive blow to the old politics," Dorgan said.

"I think Fianna Fail is a dead piece of roadkill at the moment . . . There's going to be, I think, a decimation of Fine Gael the next time out. People are going through a strange, slow-motion crash of the State. They've dealt with one of the great monoliths. They're now scrupulously giving the other monolith, in the old politics, its shot. And when that proves itself - as it absolutely will, I'm completely certain of this - a busted flush, then the new politics will happen."

And that was an accurate political reading of the landscape - the notion of an old politics that didn't understand how desperate the situation was, or how to deal with it, other than to force the mugs to pick up the bill for the excesses of others.

"So it seems to me," Dorgan said, "this is an interim moment in a long, unfolding process of change. A new way of thinking is struggling to be born."

The old politics continued - the names changed but the policies remained the same. Piling on the charges and the levies, cutting away at services. Deflating the domestic economy, nothing matters more than deficit reduction. Bonuses for people for whom massive salaries aren't enough, endless millions to lawyers and consultants.

By the time they came to Irish Water their contempt was undisguised. Sign up or else. And give us your PPS numbers, while you're at it.

And when we finally said, "Or else, what?" they blustered. Threats followed and warnings that we are mere dupes in the hands of a "sinister fringe".

The Water Tax protests made them wary of us. Which is why they acted so quickly when Jonathan Corrie died on that doorstep.

The polls have shown the parties of the old politics to indeed be a busted flush, with Independents gaining ground. At which point the politics of fear emerged.

"Think through the consequences," urged Harry Magee, Irish Times political correspondent. Without the dominance of the old parties, and their whip system, Harry warns, we'll have "TDs subject to intense lobbying both from vested interests and also from their constituencies and you have situations that would conceivably lead to stagnation and paralysis".

Ah, Harry, look around you. At the highly paid lobbyists living in the ears of ministers. As for stagnation and paralysis, let's stroll some time through the A&E ward, past the direct provision hotel and down the alleys where the homeless inject the only available relief.

People immersed in the old politics - and Harry is one of the best analysts of that game - see change as dangerous. It's hard to see, from that perspective, the stagnancy of the old and the possibilities of the new.

There are dangers ahead for what Dorgan called a new way of thinking that's struggling to be born. Dangers of ego and bad politics, of mindless competition between those who should be allies. And dangers of alliances between those who should be adversaries.

But, look at what the old politics has brought us. The bank guarantee, the coddling of busted bondholders, the nauseating deference. The ruthless application of party discipline. The shameless kissing up to the powerful, the shameful kicking down at the vulnerable.

With a large number of Independents, there may be problems to be overcome. But I cannot see circumstances in which Clare Daly and Richard Boyd Barrett - on the left - would agree to gamble the finances of the State on the word of bankers. I cannot see circumstances in which Stephen Donnelly and Shane Ross - on the right - would click their heels to Mr Draghi and say, "Yes, Sir, three bags full, Sir."

Sinn Fein, twenty years after the ceasefire, is where Fianna Fail and Fine Gael were in the 1930s. Already, they're falling prey to stifling party loyalty, and conservative instincts.

A new way of thinking may emerge through the current struggle, it may not. If the parties of the old politics are good at anything it's adapting and surviving. In the months to come they'll call in favours and make threats. They'll agree to any compromise, pay any cost, smear any rival and shaft any friend in the pursuit of survival.

Fear of change may win. Frightened by the politics of fear, we may rush back into the clammy arms of the old politics. And pay the price.

Or we may not.