If Boris Johnson admitted leaking a confidential official document to a well-connected friend, very few observers would be particularly surprised and it is highly unlikely that his future as British prime minister might be called into question.
Mr Johnson has survived a range of even more serious errors of judgment in the past, and he also a leader with a massive 80-seat Westminster majority who is only just over a year into his scheduled term of office.
Leo Varadkar, who has accepted responsibility for passing a copy of a government agreement with the Irish Medical Organisation to Maitiú Ó Túathail, the then president of a rival group, the National Association of General Practitioners, while taoiseach in April 2019, finds himself in very different circumstances.
He will certainly be expected to maintain higher standards of conduct than Mr Johnson, and crucially he is not due to take over as head of the three-party coalition administration at Leinster House until December of next year.
Mr Varadkar, who is a doctor, has declared that his leak was wrong, and publicly regretted it before surviving a vote of confidence in the Dáil last November, while also insisting that the information concerned was neither sensitive nor confidential.
His political opponents, particularly those in Sinn Féin, do not agree, and have placed an increasing spotlight on Mr Varadkar since it emerged in recent days that a full Garda investigation into the case is under way.
Mr Varadkar was already under sharp criticism for wrongly claiming that Sinn Féin had no Protestant TDs, necessitating an apology last week to the Co Clare deputy Violet-Anne Wynne.
While taoiseach Micheál Martin has said that he has no intention of agreeing to a request from Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald for a meeting over Mr Varadkar's position as tánaiste, it is clear that the issue is not going to go away.
There was separately widespread support across the political divide yesterday for Mr Varadkar and his senior Fine Gael colleague Simon Coveney after threatening graffiti, which included their home addresses, was painted by loyalist extremists on walls in east Belfast, and a firm PSNI response is essential.
However, Mr Varadkar knows that his immediate political destiny will be shaped by the Garda file which is due to be submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Violet-Anne Wynne is an Irish Sinn Féin politician
