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
Statue of Margaret Thatcher (Palace of Westminster) Baroness Thatcher in real life. Comparisons were made with such statues as the statue of Winston Churchill outside the Houses of Parliament in Parliament Square which measures high. The only statue suggested which was shorter than that of Margaret Thatcher in the Houses of Parliament, was that of Captain Cook near the Greenwich Observatory, which is only high. Once installed, the statue of Thatcher left only three former Prime Ministers missing from being represented in the Members Lobby: Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Bonar Law and Neville Chamberlain. The statue's arrival was not welcomed by all MPs; the Labour MP Stephen Hepburn