The seven-word order from Mark Latham’s wife that allegedly triggered THAT handshake with John Howard – as the ex-PM hits back

It was said to be the moment of madness that cost Mark Latham the 2004 election.

The day before Australians were due to head to the polls, the then Labor leader was emerging from an ABC studio in Sydney when he crossed paths with the man he hoped to take the keys to the Lodge from, John Howard. 

Cameras flashed as the towering Latham took the Prime Minister’s outstretched hand with an abrupt and aggressive force, before he leered over the smaller man as they exchanged terse pleasantries.

But there was nothing pleasant about it – and most observers tended to agree.

Brian Loughnane, the Liberal Party campaign director, said the incident ‘brought together all the doubts and hesitations that people had about Mark Latham’, noting that it prompted more feedback than anything else in the lead-up to the election. 

Whether it had any impact on the final result – Howard won with a thumping majority despite many predicting a Labor victory – it became a defining image of the campaign.

Now, Latham has opened old wounds by suggesting that he was merely seeking revenge for his wife who allegedly had her hand crushed by Howard at previous event.

The former Labor Leader was asked last week on NSW MP Jeremy Buckingham’s Into The Weeds podcast whether he was a ‘bully’.

‘It was just a handshake between two men but earlier… we were at a function on Grand Final Day at the St George Leagues Club and Howard crushed the hand of my wife, Janine and she said, “give it back to that little bloke”, so I did,’ Mr Latham alleged.

He added: ‘People wouldn’t believe that Howard had done that to her and I was written up as monstering him. 

‘But, you know, at the end of the day, if I wanted to rip his head off, I could’ve and all I did was shake his hand.’

But Howard has now hit back, telling Daily Mail Australia: ‘Of course I reject his absurd claim that I crushed his wife’s hand’.

The 85-year-old, who served the second-longest tenure in office of any Australian Prime Minister, previously said that Latham had tried a similarly overzealous manoeuvre a few weeks before but it wasn’t caught on camera. 

‘When I saw him coming out of that studio I thought “he’s going to do the handshake thing again”,’ Howard said in an interview with Channel Seven’s Sunday Night in 2014.

‘He was bigger than I am and he wanted to create the impression that he was dominating me. Well, it didn’t work.’

A year after Howard gave his own version of events Latham appeared on The Morning Show, in 2015, where he gave a slightly altered account of the story he told the podcast. 

‘Howard squeezed my wife’s hand so tight, she turned to me and said, “That little fella crushed my hand”,’ he said.

He added: ‘I didn’t fancy the idea of this little bloke crushing my wife’s hand to the point where she was almost crying.’

A belligerent Latham told the hosts Larry Emdur and Kylie Gilles that Howard was ‘lucky that’s all he got’. 

‘If it was out on the streets or the pubs of where I live, they would have decked the bastard,’ he said.

Edmur and Gilles then played a word association game where they showed him pictures of politicians and asked him for an instantaneous response.

After being shown a picture of Howard, he barely missed a beat.

‘Handshake mongrel,’ he said. 

The man who was on the cusp of becoming Australia’s 26th Prime Minister has enjoyed a remarkable fall from grace in subsequent years.

The 64-year-old quit politics in disgust shortly after the election defeat, before going on to make a name for himself as a controversial social and political commentator. 

Latham re-entered politics in 2017, serving a brief spell with the Libertarian Party before going on to joining Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party as NSW state leader. 

Following deeply homophobic comments he made about fellow parliamentarian Alex Greenwich, Latham was expelled by Senator Hanson and now sits as an independent.

Daily Mail Australia has approached Latham for comment.