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But they rejected the Greens and the New Democrats, too. So Philpott and Wilson-Raybould will not be wearing green, orange or red this year. Just white, which they say is the colour of independents — and purists, too.

As Wilson-Raybould says, affiliation is not for her. “I know who I am,” she says. “I am not a party person.”

No, she isn’t. Not much interest here in brokering interests or forging consensus, which is what parties do. When things did not go her way as minister of justice, she sulked, simmered, walked and then talked. She proclaims herself a truth-teller, as if her truth were the only one.

With a towering self-confidence, she vows to continue to tell her truth as an independent. Curiously, she was willing to withhold it as long as she was minister of justice. She resigned only when she was demoted, demonstrating that her truth was tied to her ambition.

Another way of putting it: Jody Wilson-Raybould is a narcissist, supremely confident of her instincts, assured of her judgment and persuasive enough to bring along a sympathetic Philpott.

Photo by Nathan Denette / THE CANADIAN PRESS

It mattered to neither the impact of their resignations, which were over “a scandal” without money and criminality but an unfortunate difference of opinion and a misreading of temperament. When Wilson-Raybould could not win the argument, she decamped, making a moral case out of a managerial one.

That you can’t always get what you want, it seemed, never stopped her. The Rolling Stones know better, as do people in every walk of life who make compromises every day because they have a larger view of things.