Ahiahi mārie, welcome to The Spinoff Daily. Today on The Spinoff: Max Rashbrooke on what the left and right still get wrong about 1980s politics, and Hera Lindsay Bird makes the case for no more celebrities on reality game shows. But first: the final episode of Juggernaut charts the the decline of the fourth Labour government, and an extraordinary exchange of correspondence reveals the collapse of the relationship between David Lange and Roger Douglas.
Toby Manhire: “The more tense it became, the less they spoke directly. Their engagement – and increasing antipathy – played out in an exchange of letters. It wasn’t just the two senior politicians, it was their offices. Geoffrey Palmer, who endeavoured in vain to reconcile the pair, spoke of the ‘Pope-Burgess letters’: Margaret Pope was Lange’s speechwriter (and lover). Bevan Burgess was Douglas’s long-serving press secretary. Stephen Mills, an aide to Lange of the time, told The Spinoff they called it ‘the Pope-Hawkins correspondence’, with the ghost-writer in Douglas’s office thought to be his economic adviser Loraine Hawkins. In that light, it’s notable where Lange stresses a letter is ‘self typed’. Below, an abridged selection of those letters. We kick off in April 1987, with a letter from Douglas to ministers, elaborating on a paper he had prepared with four options for the upcoming budget. The most radical option entailed a flat tax and a slew of corporatisations and privatisations across public services. It prompted Lange to confide to one minister, Michael Bassett, that Douglas had ‘gone mad’.”
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Bridges and betrayal: the Lange-Douglas letters
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