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By last Friday, six of the original 14 names on that list, announced with much fanfare by the Green Party, had publicly confirmed they were still with the NDP. By the end of the week, only two of the 14 — Joyce Richardson and her son Jonathan — had formally resigned their memberships in the party, according to interim New Brunswick NDP leader Mackenzie Thomason.

I don’t know how it got all mixed up

All week, meanwhile, all across Twitter, in press releases and media appearances, Canada’s fractious left was, as usual, tearing itself apart. New Democrats were accusing Greens of racism. Greens were calling New Democrats bullies. Actual federal leaders were fighting over the fate of former no-hope candidates for the fifth most popular party in a province roughly as large, by population, as the City of Mississauga.

It was the great defection that was, then wasn’t, then was again, sort of. It was the first real bun fight in a federal campaign that had almost officially begun and it was fought between two progressive parties in a place where between them they’d be blessed to win a single seat.

But the real story of the New Brunswick 14 is even stranger and smaller and more personal than the one that leaked out last week in dribs and drabs. It features a spurned leadership, a mother-son political duo, some late-night texting and the final proof, in case any more was needed, that all politics really is incredibly, minutely, mind-numbingly, local in the end.

All in all, “it was a pretty embarrassing week,” said JP Lewis, an associate professor of political science at the University of New Brunswick.