David Cameron pays respects to former chancellor and foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe, who has died at 88

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The former Conservative chancellor Sir Geoffrey Howe has died, aged 88, after a suspected heart attack, his family said on Saturday.

Lord Howe was credited with ending Margaret Thatcher’s political career by resigning from her cabinet in November 1990.

Howe’s family said he died late on Friday night at his home in Warwickshire after attending a local jazz concert with his wife, Elspeth. “There will be a private family funeral, followed by a memorial service in due course. The family would be grateful for privacy at this time.”

David Cameron led tributes to the Tory grandee who was Thatcher’s longest serving minister until he resigned in 1990. His decision was credited with starting the process that led to her resignation.

Cameron said that Howe was the “quiet hero of the first Thatcher government” and a “kind, gentle and deeply thoughtful man” who gave strong and sound advice.

Sir Geoffrey Howe: a life in politics - in pictures Read more

“His time as chancellor of the exchequer was vital in turning the fortunes of our country around, cutting borrowing, lowering tax rates and conquering inflation. Lifting exchange controls may seem obvious now, but it was revolutionary back then,” Cameron said.



George Osborne (@George_Osborne) I will miss Geoffrey Howe. He was a great source of advice to me;a quietly-spoken radical,whose bitterly contested budgets rescued Britain

“The Conservative family has lost one of its greats. Our thoughts are with his family.”



Another former Tory chancellor, Lord Lamont, said he was deeply saddened by Howe’s death: “He was a truly brilliant chancellor of the exchequer. Behind the quiet unassuming demeanour there was steely determination, dogged consistency and a sense of direction.

“He also had an impish sense of humour. Although he later fell out with Mrs Thatcher, they were for a long period a highly effective partnership, and she could not have succeeded without him. He was a Tory with a social conscience, who wanted opportunity for all. He was also a great friend and mentor to me for over 50 years.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Geoffrey Howe and Margaret Thatcher at a European summit in Copenhagen, in 1987. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex/Shutterstock

Another former chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, who was parliamentary private secretary to Howe in the Ted Heath government of 1970-74, told the BBC: “I have regarded myself as an acolyte of Geoffrey Howe throughout my career - free market economics, a special conscience, internationalism, pro-European - and I always admired his pleasant demeanour, his unflappability as well as his steely resolve and his very, very good mind.”

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said that Howe “was not afraid to stand up for what he believed in and famously demonstrated this in his historic confrontation with Mrs Thatcher”.

The Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, described him as a “kind, decent and honourable man”, while Labour frontbencher Chris Bryant praised his “gentle spirit, enquiring mind and internationalist outlook”.

Born in Port Talbot in 1926, Howe was educated at Winchester college and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He entered the Commons in November 1964 but lost his seat two years later.

Howe became a QC in 1965 and was elected MP for Reigate as well as being knighted in 1970. He served as solicitor general and trade minister in Ted Heath’s government before Labour won power in 1974.

Geoffrey Howe's most celebrated quotes Read more

After losing a leadership contest to Thatcher in 1975, she made him shadow chancellor. It was during this time that the Labour chancellor Denis Healey – who died last Saturday – made his famous jibe that being attacked by Howe was “like being savaged by a dead sheep”.

Following the Tory landslide in 1979, Thatcher made Howe her chancellor and he became a key figure in many of her most controversial economic reforms. In her second term he served as foreign secretary, where challenges included responding to the collapse of the apartheid regime in South Africa - and the increasingly complex issue of Britain’s relationship with Europe.

In 1989, amid growing tensions with Thatcher over Europe, Howe was shifted to the more junior position of leader of the House of Commons but also made deputy prime minister.

He resigned in November 1990, shortly after Thatcher declared that the UK would never join a single currency project.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Geoffrey Howe gives his resignation speech in the House of Commons in 1990. Photograph: PA

In his resignation speech in the Commons, he criticised Thatcher for undermining policies on economic and monetary union in Europe that were backed by her colleagues and the governor of the Bank of England.

“It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease, only for them to find, as the first balls are being bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain,” he declared.

Three weeks later, Thatcher herself resigned after failing to prevent a Tory leadership contest going beyond the first round.

Howe entered the House of Lords in June 1992 and retired in May this year.