Political slip-ups have nasty habit of sneaking up on you

It’s the little things that trip you up,” as Albert Reynolds famously remarked once – and it remains an indisputable fact of political life that banana skins will be placed in your path when you least expect them.

Take the night of the Budget; Pearse Doherty had had a day to remember, while conversely Fianna Fáil had got itself into a bit of a bind, outdone by its own cleverness.

It had pushed for several things in the Budget as part of its confidence and supply agreement. But it had gone too early, and Fine Gael had been able to incorporate them and then outflank Fianna Fáil on them.

For example, Willie O’Dea had made an early insistence on a €5 increase in the old age pension. Leo Varadkar cleverly proposed to extend the increase to most other Social Welfare recipients, criticising Fianna Fáil for being too selective.

Of course, that created a problem with paying for the measure, but they got over that one by delaying the introduction date. Fine Gael definitely salvaged a draw on that one.

The net effect was that Fianna Fáil didn’t really have a huge amount to show for itself at the end of Budget Day.

It’s a centrist party, and so is Fine Gael – and no matter how much they shout and roar at each other, they are the closest ideologically of all the parties.

As I’ve explained before, their joint strategy – unwritten, unplanned and unspoken – is to stay separate. By continuing this rivalry, by keeping their own identity, by having distinct differences on other issues – the North, the Irish language, social and moral questions – they do enough to create a rivalry to keep both strong. If they combined forces, they would lose market share and let another pretender in.

In any event, Fianna Fáil’s speeches on Budget Day were the weakest and most incipient of all time. The only thing lacking was the spectacle of man hugs and high fives between Michael Noonan, Paschal Donohoe, Michael McGrath and Dara Calleary.

Against that backdrop, Doherty gave a very spirited and well thought-out speech. In best rhetorical style, he deployed a little exaggeration and a bit of manipulation with the realities.

There was a slight increase in the allowable thresholds for inheritance tax. He portrayed it as a tax to favour the wealthiest in society, whereas in fact even the higher threshold will affect many ordinary families inheriting even the most ordinary house.

He also criticised, not the modest tax relief measures in the Budget, but rather the (promised) tax relief that may or may not come over the next four years.

Be that as it may, it was still a good speech.

Doherty’s day got even better when RTÉ made the extraordinary call to elevate Sinn Féin to the role of official opposition for its Prime Time debate – even if that did not materialise in the end because Noonan would not agree to it.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.