Margaret Thatcher tendency to override collegiate opinion, contributed to discontent within her party. Thatcher removed Geoffrey Howe as Foreign Secretary in July 1989 after he and Lawson had forced her to agree to a plan for Britain to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). Britain joined the ERM in October 1990. On 1 November 1990, Howe, by then the last remaining member of Thatcher's original 1979 cabinet, resigned from his position as Deputy Prime Minister, ostensibly over her open hostility to moves towards European Monetary Union. In his resignation speech on 13 November, Howe commented on Thatcher's openly dismissive attitude to
Diana Gould – Margaret Thatcher exchange Thatcher replied: "But it was not sailing away from the Falklands. It was in an area which was a danger to our ships and to our people on them." Gould said that the ship had been "on a bearing of 280 and it was already west of the Falklands". Thatcher continued to insist that the ship had represented a danger to British troops, and that the Argentine government had been warned that any ships representing a danger within a certain area were vulnerable. Gould pressed the prime minister several times to clarify whether the ship had been sailing away from