The thinking is very simple: there are more important things going on in the world. If parties want to get their members together and have a shindig, that's fine. But by covering conferences to the extent that we do, newspapers and broadcasters award them an importance they don't deserve, thereby encouraging the political parties to do the whole thing, in even more garish and over-the-top fashion, the following year.

There are arguments on both sides. Why, for example, do we have to put up with some of Ireland's most inarticulate individuals making flimsy speeches in even more threadbare suits on our TV screens? Why, apart from filling space on a quiet Monday, does the Irish Times insist on giving a minimum of two pages to every ardfheis or annual conference, no matter how dull? These days, most conferences seem to be run for the benefit of newspaper colour writers, who get prime opportunities to hone their satirical skills. And while this mightn't be the worst reason in the world to keep conferences going, colour writers have all sorts of targets on whom they can bestow their witty barbs. Politicians are far too easy to satirise.

Last weekend's Fine Gael conference was a prime example of why annual get-togethers still hold a value in Irish life, even if the value in this case was entirely negative.

Elsewhere in this newspaper today, Michael Clifford analyses Crazy Enda's 'Crackdown On Crime', but looked at in broader terms, Kenny's two speeches last weekend and the general tenor and tone of the conference spoke so loudly and clearly of one of the great truths of Irish politics in 2006: this government, as bad and dishonest and incompetent and hypocritical as it often is, is blessed . . . to a perhaps unprecedented degree . . . by its enemies, both within and without politics.

A prediction: as long as PD/Fianna Fail doesn't do anything stupid and avoids the kind of scandals that have been tearing apart the British government of late, it will win the next election. It won't even require a giveaway budget in December to bribe us into voting for it. A neutral, steady- asshe-goes, kick-every-problem-intothe-autumn-of-next-year approach will surely suffice.

Crazy Enda is only part of the reason for the electoral disaster that surely awaits the opposition, although he is the very biggest part.

In a recent speech, Michael McDowell boasted about how it is the smaller party that sets the tone of coalition governments, and he may well be right. But in untried alliances of opposition parties, it is the bigger unit which drags everything else behind it. Crazy Enda has pulled Fine Gael significantly to the right in recent times and Pat Rabbitte has had no choice but to tag along behind.

His anti-immigrant comments earlier in the year (and spin them how you will, that's what they were) were the most spectacular example of this shift within Labour from being a party with a potentially clear and alternative vision for Ireland to one that will pander meekly to the requirements of others. Locked into an alliance that was announced far too early, Rabbitte and the Labour Party are effectively bound by the Mullingar Accord to stay quiet whenever Crazy Enda loses the run of himself as he did last week.

For every hang 'em and flog 'em merchant who will respond to Crazy Enda's ravings in CityWest, there will be at least one potential Rainbow voter who will have despaired, who now knows that she has nowhere to go next year, no serious alternative government that she can vote for. And so she will either stay at home and vote for nobody, or grudgingly support the local hospital candidate, with his one-track mind and badly-printed leaflets. The point is that she, and all the others like her, will not need to vote for PD/Fianna Fail for the government to win the election. It will be enough that we don't vote for the opposition parties who, lest they forget, and they clearly have, will need every possible vote, from the left as well as the right, if they are to win seats in the required numbers to unseat the coalition.

Like I said, the government is blessed by the incompetence of its enemies. This is as true of events outside Dail Eireann as it is of matters within. Michael McDowell merely has to get up in the morning and say the words "Garda Reserve" to know that the inevitable hysterical response from the Garda Representative Association will make him look like a strong and capable leader.

Last week's Keystone Cops performance by the GRA at its annual conference indicated just how in control of the Reserve controversy the government really is. Firstly sinister, by suggesting that no charges could be brought against colleagues for noncooperation with the Reserve (because gardai would have to investigate gardai, and we all know their reluctance to do that); then pathetic, by using sniper imagery to suggest the targeting of politicians;

and finally hilarious, when they had to apologise to the government, gardai showed last week that they are as powerless to run an effective campaign of opposition as they are to crack gangland crime.

And on it goes. Whenever Sinn Fein looks like it could do serious damage to Fianna Fail, somebody robs a bank or murders someone.

The IMO has singularly failed to tie the interests of its members to the interests of a public which wants a decent health service. By ripping off their customers, publicans were unable to credibly appeal to those same customers in their campaign against the smoking ban.

Governments as mediocre as this one need luck to stay in power. The sad truth about Irish life currently, as evidenced by the performances of the Blueshirts and the blueuniformed last week, is that this coalition has won the lottery.