A LOT OF PEOPLE on Twitter today have been sharing a video of the famous passage from the Monty Python film The Life of Brian where the People's Front of Judea take profound offence at being mistaken for the Judean People's Front.

"If you wanted to join the PFJ, you'd have to really hate the Romans," John Cleese's character comments. "The only people we hate more than the Romans are the Judean People's Front."

Most casual observers would find it difficult to understand exactly why Ireland's selection of left-wing parties fall into a similar trap. For years there has been longstanding antipathy between the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers' Party (one is Trotskyist, the other is Trotskyist and Marxist... ask your parents) which has only ever been overcome in brief patches.

Today we learned that the two parties - or, rather, another two 'child' parties sharing most of their members - are to form a 'Dail group' for the purposes of fighting the next election.

The People Before Profit Alliance (which is mostly, but not entirely, made up of members of the Socialist Workers' Party) is to form an alliance with the Anti-Austerity Alliance (which is mostly, but not entirely, made up of members of the Socialist Party).

Specifically, they say, they're looking to form a "unified parliamentary group" - and have filed paperwork to set up a political party which can "contest the General Election with the intention of getting enough TDs elected to be an official Dail group/party in its own right".

It's not the first time such an electoral alliance has been broached. In 2010 the SP and PBPA joined forces with the WUAG (that's the Workers and Unemployment Action Group, a vehicle dominated by TD Seamus Healy) to form a single electoral banner, the United Left Alliance. That alliance returned five TDs (two SP, two PBPA and one WUAG) but collapsed within around two years leaving its members to once again claim their own individual party titles. The SP went on to lose one TD, win another, and then have a further member elected under its AAA banner. 

This time it might be different

But looking behind the statement of the new AAA-PBP party (the last 'Alliance' had to be dropped because political parties' names can only be six words in length) there's a hint that this alliance might be more than just a passing fad.

That's because the new AAA-PBP isn't being registered as a new party - it's actually taking over an old one. 

If this Iris Oifigiuil entry is the official AAA-PBP document, it appears PBP will cease to exist as standalone party pic.twitter.com/CUN13csbuk

— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) September 16, 2015

The key is in the language of the notice that appeared in the Iris Oifigiúil, the official state gazette in which boring regulatory stuff like this is published. The new initiative isn't a coming together of equals - it's basically one party overtaking the other.

If the PBP's name and other attributes are being changed, the PBP will cease to exist. And that's all the more striking when you realise that the Socialist Worker's Party was also taken off the party register in February 2013. This new vehicle will be the only legally recognised home for the PBP members (including one TD and fourteen councillors). 

But then, is this a marriage of equals? Actually, it turns out: yes it is. Because this new vehicle won't exist alongside a separate registration for the Anti-Austerity Alliance. It, last month, was quietly expunged from the record too. 

Once this registration is complete, legally there won't be an Anti-Austerity Alliance to speak of. Nor will there be a People Before Profit Alliance. There won't even be a cloaked shell of a Socialist Workers' Party. 

The only surviving remnant of the precursor parties will be the Socialist Party, which is now for ballot purposes known as the Stop the Water Tax Socialist Party. But that party is now also, almost entirely, defunct. In 2014 it didn't run a single local election candidate. The SP existed in 2014 only to appear on the ballot papers of Ruth Coppinger in the Dublin West by-election, and of Paul Murphy in the European Parliament election.

This may all seem like a technicality but it's a sign that the two largest vehicles of the hard left in Ireland are not only joining together for an electoral pact, but rather as a permanent single entity. As developments go it's one of the more striking in their field. 

And it's entirely plausible that once the AAA-PBP gets off the ground (and perhaps, over time, chooses a much more approachable name) the SP might also go the way of the SWP and be dissolved into political history.

But what more?

But there is one remaining question for the new unit - whether there might be more people joining this new vehicle of the left.

The 'United Left' party was founded last year in a breakaway move by Clare Daly, who had already left the SP before the AAA existed, and Joan Collins, who had left the PBPA without ever having been a member of the SWP. 

(As it now seems, the name 'United Left' might have been deeply ironic.) 

If those two were members of the new unit there would be six TDs - only one short of the magic number needed to guarantee speaking rights in the Dáil. Joe Higgins is retiring in Dublin West and there's little hope of retaining both seats out there, but nonetheless with the right personnel a goal of seven TDs ought to be eminently achievable. 

But that's only if everyone gets on board. In Dublin South-Central, councillor Brid Smyth (PBP-AAA) and Joan Collins (UL) are already both declared as candidates. It's a four-seater and getting both elected would be a push - but if the parties can at least agree to an electoral pact, if not a full alliance, the future could be far brighter.

What about getting Seamus Healy's WUAG on board, with a dedicated core of local activists in an area beyond the AAA-PBP pale? And what about getting Mick Wallace's own solo vehicle, the 'Independents for Equality Movement', to join too? The magic threshold of seven deputies could be much more attainable.

And if Enda Kenny returns to power (as the polls would suggest), and is met with questioning from a respected hard-left TD at Leaders' Questions every single day, the profile of the left might only keep rising.

As long as they can learn to work alongside each other, and realise that they all hate the Romans in equal measure.

Gavan Reilly is Today FM's political correspondent. http://twitter.com/gavreilly