The decision of Labour and Democratic Left to move towards unity of the left was probably not timed to coincide with the most triumphal Fianna Fail ardfheis for years.
But events take a hand when they're least expected, as Harold Macmillan once observed; and in time the coincidence may come to look like a deliberate challenge to a government riding dangerously high in the polls.
A realignment of politics on ideological lines has always been an ambition of the left. But the left-wing strategists believed it would be on their terms, with socialist or social democratic ideas at the centre of the great debate.
Now, in spite of some foolish claims by protagonists on either side, it's the right, both within and outside politics, that has made the running and the left which has been forced to stand and hold its ground.
It's not without allies, some of whose clerical suits might surprise older hands; and it's not without evidence - from impeccable sources - of the need to fight its corner. Mr Justice Declan Costello lately urged constitutional change to ensure that society's obligations were met on the issues of social and economic rights.
A large minority lived below the poverty line, he said. International capitalism and market forces increased national wealth but were indifferent to its distribution. Services for the poor, the mentally handicapped, young offenders and travellers were "chronically inadequate".
The counter-argument posed by Ministers and commentators is summed up in a word: taxation. Some paint an awesome picture of "the average taxpayer" - a person in contemporary politics who must be obeyed. He (or she) is someone who's never ill or, if so, privately treated. Whose children are privately educated. Who is never likely to rely on public transport. And who, in the end, has no fear of having to depend on welfare.
As Charlie McCreevy and Brian Cowen keep saying, the only thing the average taxpayer worries about is the state of the Exchequer, the cost of sharing the State with - well, the rest of us.
The rest of us: parents whose children go to State schools; people who are old or ill or out of work, who live in hope of a local authority house; weary women on buses with children clinging to their skirts; people who are sick to death of waiting for beds in the wards of public hospitals.
I wonder if the Minister for Finance or the Minister for Health will meet any of these at Fianna Fail's 63rd ardfheis in Dublin today?
Maybe the deputies or delegates at the RDS will tell them about the people whose problems are so troublesome to Ministers and taxpayers alike. Or, as Ministers and taxpayers describe themselves, the people who pay for everything.
This, of course, is a caricature and, like all caricatures, a distortion. But so, as we shall see, is the average taxpayer of the Ministers' imagination. It hasn't prevented Mr Cowen from batting stubbornly in his (or her) interests all week.
Patients may be lying wheel to wheel in hospital corridors, squatting hour after hour in admission wards or wondering when the call will come that promises, this year or next, the operation they so badly need. Mr Cowen's mind is elsewhere. It's not that he doesn't care about these people: he doesn't see them as people, and he cares about money more. Not for himself, of course. He cares for the Exchequer, over which Mr McCreevy snarls and stands guard; and for the taxpayer. It's a mentality that's grown into a sad habit over the years. Those who love tags and labels know the price of everything and the value of nothing. You could call it a social disease, though not in the usual sense. In Fianna Fail's case it's a contagion that has turned a decent party sour.
Take Rory O'Hanlon, who recounted its recent successes on Morning Ireland yesterday: the general and presidential elections, the Belfast Agreement, and the economy. But when he was asked "what next?" all he could offer as a vision for the years ahead was a feeble warning about the need for tight reins and, presumably, a tighter purse.
And when he was asked about the rising tide of anger at health, housing and public service pay, the uncertain future of small farmers and the winks, nods and sidesteps of regionalisation, he trotted out some guff about the politics of perception. As if it was the public, not the party, that was suffering from delusions.
The biggest delusion of all is the one exhibited by Jim McDaid on Dunlop and Finlay the other night when he said that Fianna Fail had "moulded itself into a socialist party".
I thought I was hearing things - to be precise, one of Brian Lenihan's dottier notions straight from the pages of James Downey's generous biography.
Thirty-five years ago the idea was as farfetched as Sean Lemass's claim that this was a classless society. Now that the party has been in office for 47 of the last 70 years, it's farther from the left than ever.
Of course, some have reached Utopia. A few of them are being examined by the Flood and Moriarty tribunals; others are being scrutinised by Mary Harney's investigators.
Yet others will keep the secrets of their fortunes - not to mention their political contributions - unless and until the Ansbacher accounts are opened.
The contest between right and left, conservative and socialist - FF at the RDS, Labour and Democratic Left up the road in Kildare House - is often presented as an argument between equity and efficiency.
In terms of tax and public services, the so-called average taxpayer is set in opposition to people who rely on public services - as if these were not only mutually exclusive groups but necessarily antagonistic to each other.
But, as the latest report of the Comptroller and Auditor General confirms, those who contribute most to the cost of public services - and government spending of all kinds - are taxpayers on PAYE.
And the "average taxpayer", given his or her income, relies as heavily - though perhaps not as openly - on public spending on health, education and other services as everyone else.
There's another dimension to the debate about taxes, which was acknowledged by Mary Harney yesterday. Addressing a banking conference in Frankfurt, she explained the State's tax strategy: "Over the last 10 years we have cut the standard rate of corporation tax by 18 per cent. We have cut the standard rate of capital gains tax by 20 per cent. We have cut the basic rate of income tax by 8 per cent. We have cut the top rate of income tax by 12 per cent."