The most trenchant of them, and one of the last, is: "Margaret Pope became the single biggest factor in the collapse of David Lange's government." So who is this woman, unelected, virtually unknown except among the Wellington political cognoscenti, and very briefly of interest to the prurient - all of a generation ago?
I met her just the once. Lange came to Dunedin to speak, as usual unwillingly, to a Labour Party conference. I interviewed him in Wain's Hotel and thought afterwards that it was an odd business; after all, why would the PM's sole companion on such a visit be his speechwriter? Well, we all know why now.
To read Bassett describe Lange as being "trapped between his cabinet and his speechwriter", however, is to wonder what kind of Gorgon she was to hold an entire government in thrall.
Her account of those revolutionary days has the subtitle, "my political life with David Lange" and she is indeed the nominal central figure in her story. But she emerges in a curiously ghostly fashion, present in form but not really in substance.
No-one under the age of 40 will remember the period 1984-90, and no-one in the age group will remember that Lange had a lover (later his second wife) whose name was Margaret Pope. So I wonder for whom is this book intended?
Clearly, Pope wishes to answer her accusers, particularly Bassett, but the chaos of those days and Lange's political incompetence as the self-described "chairman of the board" has been very well turned over by all manner of witnesses, not excepting Lange himself.
Interest in this book will probably focus on two elements, the romance and the lunacies of Lange's last months in office. The first is described in terms of extreme discretion. We learn that Lange - at the time "famously married to Naomi" - indicated his feelings towards Pope within six months of taking office, that in early 1985 "my fondness for David turned to love", that her presence in his party on official visits began as soon as the Oxford Union debate, and that the relationship rapidly became public, in Wellington at least.
As for whether Pope's actions matched Bassett's accusations, it is certainly obvious from her account that she was active in trying to diminish the influence of Roger Douglas and his supporters, and seems especially to have worked to ensure Douglas' activist mouthpiece and press official, Bevan Burgess, was removed.
She clearly believes Burgess' "leaking and smearing and the countless ways in which he embroidered the issues on behalf of Douglas" was a major influence on the destruction of the apparent unity of the 1984-87 period. But note, also, that she concedes to plotting with others in Lange's office, "to discuss tactics"; ergo "we had to goad Douglas into resignation".
The truth of the Government's collapse was much more complicated than merely the clashing of giant egos, but suffice to say Douglas - "a zealot"- could count numbers and Lange could not be bothered. Lange thought he could run the Government by winging it with wit and personality. Douglas, far more experienced and grounded in political realities, knew numbers counted in the end. So Lange lost his majority in the cabinet and had to go because he had failed to accept, or was too arrogant to care, that numbers mattered.
Pope, more than ruefully I suspect, concedes that with his political capital exhausted (despite her urging him to cultivate that by now barren field), "it was pointless at this stage to imagine David might alter and actively seek support or even an attentive ear among the caucus ..."
He "always found some reason not to" talk to Labour's backbenchers, she writes. "His reticence was a weakness in any politician who wished to win power and keep it ..."
Consider, too, the state of mind behind his description of his own caucus - according to Pope - as that "unique combination of social misfits and imbeciles, together with some very good people".
At The Turning Point will have its uses for students of the events of that extraordinary and destructive time, but only as a footnote to the history of the 1980s and '90s, when the social compact of the previous 50 years was replaced with the ethos of the orgiasts of "greed is good".
- Bryan James, who recently retired as deputy editor of the ODT, was the newspaper's political editor from 1975 to 1990.
