IT was the speech of a lifetime by a man who was no orator, and it signalled the beginning of the end for the premiership of Margaret Thatcher.

When Sir Geoffrey Howe, who died at the weekend aged 88, rose to his feet on November 13, 1990, no one, but no one, had a clue what was going to happen next. Even 25 years later, I can recall the growing shock that went round the room of (mainly Labour) jaw-dropping councillors I was with.

It is often forgotten that the issue which provoked Howe’s resignation was Britain’s entry into the exchange rate mechanism of the European Monetary System – forerunner of the Eurozone. The Europhiles in the Tory party wanted it, the Eurosceptics did not, and Thatcher was increasingly siding with them – her “No, No, No” comment was by then infamous.

Surely Howe, famously the “dead sheep” of the Commons, would content himself merely with a sly dig at the Great She-Elephant, as Denis Healey had so memorably nicknamed Thatcher.

Not a bit of it. After a few reminders of his remarkably lengthy service in Government, he moved to the nub of the matter – Britain’s place in Europe and the need to be in Europe to argue for change.

Howe said: “It is crucially important that we should conduct those arguments upon the basis of a clear understanding of the true relationship between this country, the community and our community partners.

“And it is here, I fear, that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister increasingly risks leading herself and others astray in matters of substance as well as of style.”

Ouch. What a dig at the Leaderene ...

He went on: “We commit a serious error if we think always in terms of ‘surrendering’ sovereignty and seek to stand pat for all time on a given deal – by proclaiming, as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister did two weeks ago, that we have ‘surrendered enough’.”

He was only just hitting his stride, but Thatcher was already sitting stone-faced and shaking with anger. As she recalled in her memoirs, his speech was “cool, forensic, light at points and poisonous”.

It was a lot more dangerous than that. A few days previously Thatcher had used a cricketing metaphor in her defence of her stance on Europe.

Howe hit her for six as he described her habit of dealing with Europe by sledging: “It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.”

On he went: “The tragedy is – and it is for me personally, for my party, for our whole people and for my right honourable friend herself, a very real tragedy – that the Prime Minister’s perceived attitude towards Europe is running increasingly serious risks for the future of our nation.”

After 18 minutes of this of very polite savagery came the coup de grace: “The time has come for others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long.”

Michael Heseltine considered overnight then launched his leadership bid. Thatcher was gone from No 10 in weeks.

Howe’s death on the weekend that David Cameron stated his four demands for staying in Europe is replete with irony, for many of those criticisms of Thatcher might apply now to Cameron and his attitude to the euro, refugees and greater integration, among other European matters.

Perhaps a dead sheep will yet come back to savage a Prime Minister who really doesn’t know what to do about his party and Europe.