This week, Fine Gael will elect a new leader of their party. Just that, leader of Fine Gael. Not necessarily the alternative Taoiseach, despite Fine Gael presumptions to that effect.
Understandably, the leadership contest has excited considerable attention. There is nothing the media love more than a party turning in on itself. The backdrop to this particular leadership heave is, of course, the recent Irish Times/MRBI opinion poll. That poll showed Fine Gael support at 20 per cent, equal to the combined support of Labour and the Greens.
The various candidates for the Fine Gael leadership have talked about connecting with the public, about Fine Gael going into free fall and about the party's declining market share. Not without reason. As Jack Jones of MRBI pointed out in this newspaper on Friday, Labour alone of the three main parties has increased its share of seats since 1981.
But apart from stating that Fine Gael's duty was to be the opposition and alternative to Fianna Fail, little enough has been said about the party's identity and the values it represents.
If being the opposition to Fianna Fail is Fine Gael's own perception of its role, it is clear the public no longer thinks in those simple terms. The MRBI poll is instructive in that regard. Fine Gael clearly no longer commands a majority among those 60 per cent of the electorate who oppose Fianna Fail.
To a great extent, Fine Gael distinguished itself from Fianna Fail through one key issue - its attitude to the national question. As Labour has argued consistently, the Good Friday agreement has changed that. Its implementation is supported by all.
This FF/PD Government is conservative and right wing. It has used its period in office to divert wealth from those who need it most to those who need it least. It has undermined confidence in the political process.
Only Labour can provide real ideological opposition to this Government. That is the essence of Fine Gael's problem. Rather than the divide between left and right being made irrelevant, as Fine Gael likes to argue, it has become all the more pressing because of the actions of Charlie McCreevy and this Government.
There may be some social democrats in Fine Gael, but by conviction it is a long way from being a social democratic party.
The venomous Fianna Fail reaction to Labour's policy announcements of recent months confirm that Fianna Fail sees Labour as the real threat to its cross-class, cross-issue support base and its narrow definition of what it means to be Irish.
In particular, our economic position paper, New Direction, New Priorities, sets out to define the growing and discernible difference between Irish political parties - Labour's European social democracy and Fianna Fail's conservative atlanticism. We stand alone, too, on the issue of banning corporate donations to political parties.
My party, Labour, merged with the Democratic Left party two years ago. The immediate effect was to increase our numbers in Leinster House. But it has been about more than that. It represents a statement of our ambition. Sean Lemass once said Labour aspired to the heights but lacked the stomach for the journey. No longer.
Fine Gael automatically assumes its leader should be Taoiseach in any government that does not contain Fianna Fail. Labour does not accept that. Once upon a time to be a credible contender for the presidency you had to be a member of either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael. The coalition built around Mary Robinson in 1990 changed that. Both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael were defeated.
Nowhere is it written in stone that the leader of a government must come from the largest party making up that government. It has certainly happened in other European countries. So why shouldn't Ruairi Quinn be Taoiseach?
After the departure of John Bruton, he is the most experienced politician on the Opposition benches. He will be the only Opposition leader to have been finance minister. As finance minister, he laid the foundations for the prosperity we are now enjoying.
He leads a party that is the voice of European social democracy in Ireland, a political movement that is the linchpin of centre-left governments in France, the UK and Germany.
It is a movement that believes in the values of community. It is a movement that believes all citizens are entitled to basic rights such as health, education, housing and childcare, and that money should be raised to pay for these rights. It is also an internationalist movement, committed to expressing the values of the Irish people in international forums, not thumbing our noses at Europe.
Because Labour believes these things, we will face the electorate at the upcoming election as an independent party. Because he believes in these things, Ruairi Quinn will be our nominee for Taoiseach. And nothing that happens at Fine Gael's meeting tomorrow will change that.
Brendan Howlin is deputy leader of the Labour Party