From top: Bernie Sanders in 2016; Fianna Fáil party leader Micheál Martin at the Fianna Fáil party conference at Citywest Hotel Dublin on Saturday night; Bryan Wall

Where is the Irish Bernie Sanders? This is a question that should be on all of our minds. It should be the question. Where is the change that is so badly needed in Irish society going to come from? And where is our equivalent of a political outsider with massive widespread support and appeal?

They won’t be found in the mainstream political parties, including the more left-leaning ones. Labour are traitors and the Social Democrats are dead on arrival. People before Profit and the Socialist Party have the self-defeating tendency, like many parties of the left, to put ideology above moral consistency.

Instead of actually joining with people who engage in political activism and campaigning day in, day out, they insist on entryism at all costs.

If this means denigrating and undermining campaigns that, if successful, would genuinely leave us in a better position for the foreseeable future, then so be it.  I have seen it first-hand. They paint themselves as the victims whilst victimising everyone who doesn’t adhere to their vanguardism.

As for the “big two”, expect nothing but more of the same. Crumbs for the many and lavish meals for the few. Micheál Martin can pontificate as much as he likes about Fine Gael and Leo Varadkar.

But Leo Varadkar is in the position he is in because of Fianna Fáil and Martin’s leadership of the party.

The latter’s criticisms of the government, then, are hollow; an attempt at differentiating one right-wing party from another slightly more right-wing party.

During their Ard Fheis this past weekend, Martin was clear to point out the failings of Fine Gael. He decried their “out of touch and arrogant government.”

Fine Gael, he said, are “incapable of delivering”. Its minister “are passionate about using public money to promote themselves.” Fine Gael, he went on, “simply don’t understand the pressures which people are facing every day”.

You would think then that Fianna Fáil would be on the other side of the Dáil given Martin’s comments. Alas no. “Ireland faces a genuinely historic threat from Brexit”, according to him.

This means Ireland “has to have a government in place if we are to have any chance of limit its damage.” It is for this reason Fianna Fáil “took the step of extending the confidence and supply agreement.”

According to Martin:

It’s a difficult decision for us, but it’s the right decision. And it reinforces the fact that Fianna Fáil is putting the national interest first.

At least that’s what he’d like us all to believe. Brexit is just an excuse for Fianna Fáil to stay in a holding pattern. Current polling does not favour them. And do not underestimate the lure the Taoiseach’s office has for Micheál Martin.

So with all of this in mind, where indeed would an Irish Bernie Sanders come from in the first place?

Sanders should be seen as a uniquely American phenomenon. His policies, if he ran over here, would likely place him somewhere towards the centre of the political spectrum. In America, however, he is as a radical.

This is indicative of the insanity of American politics. Our own version of Sanders would need to bypass the standard party system and not be beholden to any party’s whip. In fact, any change in Ireland must instead come at a grassroots level.

Sanders is as close to grassroots as many in America are willing to go. We, on the other hand, can and should go much further.

But this will not be easy. We have an establishment which abhors change in the form of greater democracy and openness. Any move to make for ourselves a more democratic and equal country is see as radical.

For these same people the most radical thing they are capable of is wearing brightly coloured socks. Politics for them is propaganda wing of business interests.

The scandal surrounding the bill for the children’s hospital is indicative of this. It must be built, no matter the cost.

Why? Because if it doesn’t it might not go over well with a company which has a record of acquiring government contracts and then bleeding the taxpayer dry.

These are the same reasons we were given for the bank guarantee and bailout. The banks have to be bailed out. Why? Because if we don’t it might annoy some of the government’s friends who have a lot to lose if their debts aren’t soaked up by the taxpayer.

Everybody knows what happened as a result. Massive cutbacks, the immiseration of the country, and a massive transfer of wealth.

And now, with the children’s hospital, it has been reported that already cutbacks in other areas of the health service will have to be made because of the ludicrous bill for the hospital. The government line is: Our friends have to be paid, so you have to suffer. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The parties of the right have nothing to offer the mass of people except false promises. To the wealthy they owe their success, and return the favour in the ways expected and well-known in Irish society. As for the far right, they offer nothing but hatred mixed with ignorance of history.

It is not that they should be ignored. But the more immediate threat are the men in suits, not the men who parrot 4chan conspiracy theories. The latter only understand and fear violence. The former, more than anything, fear a truly democratic society which would hold them to account.

So, the Irish Bernie Sanders isn’t any person in particular. It is more of a movement that wants to create a better and more equal society. One where politics is not a facade to cover up the transfer of wealth from the masses to the few. We can each of us be our own version of Sanders in the sense of challenging the establishment.

That is the only way that any progress will be made in Irish society. Martin and Varadkar will continue their game of political will-they-or-won’t-they.

For anyone else who actually cares about creating a better society, they will be doing something productive. They’ll be organising, dissenting, and generally causing a ruckus. We’ll be all the better for it.

Bryan Wall is an independent journalist based in Cork. His column appears here every Monday. Read more of his work here and follow Bryan on twitter:  @Bryan_Wall

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