Mark Stuart: Ghost of Howe's resignation speech hangs over Cameron

In the second volume of his excellent biography, John Campbell recalls the Iron Lady's dreadful treatment of Sir Geoffrey. After listening to one rather dull, monotone presentation from Howe, the Prime Minister asked for the windows to be opened, saying: "We can't have people falling asleep."

Having been cruelly demoted from Foreign Secretary to Leader of the House of Commons the year before, Sir Geoffrey had suffered one insult too many.

He therefore set about crafting a masterly resignation speech, delivered 13 days after his departure from the Government. His inspiration came from a typically bravura address that Mrs Thatcher delivered at the Lord Mayor of London's Guildhall Banquet. Using a cricketing metaphor, the Prime Minister declared: "I'm still at the crease, though the bowling has been pretty hostile of late." In case anyone doubted it, she indicated that there would be "no ducking the bouncers... the bowling's going to be hit all round the ground. That's my style".

Sir Geoffrey demonstrated the following day that the Prime Minister did not retain a monopoly of cricketing metaphors.

To a stunned House of Commons, he launched a devastating attack on Mrs Thatcher's abrasive style: "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."

The full impact of Sir Geoffrey's remarks was relayed live to the nation, the House of Commons having agreed to televise its proceedings just a year before. Next to Howe sat an impassive Nigel Lawson, himself forced to resign from the Government as Chancellor a year earlier.

Fellow Tory backbenchers could not maintain the same air of calm, letting out a mixture of gasps of astonishment and nervous laughs as the former Leader of the House concluded: "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."

That final sentence was interpreted by Michael Heseltine as his long-awaited "set of unforeseen circumstances" that enabled him to challenge Margaret Thatcher for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Nine days later, the Prime Minister was forced to resign.

Not only was Howe's resignation speech one of the finest the Commons has seen, it was a timely reminder of the importance that the Prime Minister should attach to maintaining civil human relationships with his or her key Cabinet ministers.

Far too often in the past, Prime Ministers have succumbed to the urge to slight close Cabinet colleagues. Mrs Thatcher's great nemesis, Sir Edward Heath, was notoriously poor when it came to the human side of the job, an unfortunate trait that built up enemies, and eventually led to his overthrow in 1975.

More recently, Gordon Brown's shabby treatment of Alistair Darling as Chancellor in June of last year illustrated just how little the last Prime Minister knew or cared about what is commonly referred to nowadays as people skills.

By way of sharp contrast, one of the greatest strengths of the present incumbent, David Cameron, is his ability to soothe the ruffled egos of his Cabinet colleagues.

If newspaper accounts are to be believed, Cameron's personal intervention proved crucial recently in settling a heated row between

Liam Fox and George Osborne over defence cuts.

But if Cameron's style has a weakness, it is his cavalier disregard for ordinary Conservative backbenchers. We saw this early on in his premiership when he tried to stuff the hallowed Tory backbench 1922 Committee full of his own Government supporters, a move which backfired. We are seeing it in his programme of constitutional vandalism in railroading through Parliament a referendum on the Alternative Vote and a fixed-term parliament.

One important lesson therefore from Howe's resignation and Thatcher's subsequent downfall is that a Prime Minister only remains in the job if they retain the confidence and support of his or her own backbenchers. Cameron needs to exercise much more care in keeping in close touch with a growing number of disgruntled Conservative MPs if this coalition is to survive its full five-year term.

Most seriously of all, by entering into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, a strongly pro-European cuckoo has re-entered the Tory nest. It is as though the clock has been turned back 20 years because on closer inspection, Sir Geoffrey Howe's resignation was triggered as much by differences of substance over European integration as over Mrs Thatcher's abrasive style.

At some point in the not-too-distant future, Cameron could face Thatcher's European dilemma in reverse: pursuing a moderately pro-European policy that the Liberal Democrat partners in the coalition will enthusiastically support, but that his Tory backbenchers will not be able to stomach at any price. Thursday's budget discussions at the EU summit illustrated this conundrum.

In such circumstances, we could perhaps see a Howe-style resignation speech being delivered by a Eurosceptic former member of Cameron's Cabinet: Sir Geoffrey's "tragic conflict of loyalties" between party and government might become just too much for the Tory Right to bear.

Mark Stuart is a political historian from York who has written the biographies of John Smith and Douglas Hurd.