Oration station: GREAT political speeches (final) - Part 3

Geoffrey Howe, 1990

Sir Geoffrey Howe, resignation speech, House of Commons, November 1990. 

Sir Geoffrey Howe, deputy prime minister to Margaret Thatcher, resigned on 1 November 1990. His resignation speech on 13 November, a stinging rebuke of Thatcher's European policy, is thought to have been a catalyst to the prime minister's departure nine days later.

Howe drove the knife deep into divisions in the Conservative leadership, portraying Thatcher's attitudes to the European Monetary System as damaging for both country and party.

He is not generally regarded as a great orator -- indeed, Denis Healey once likened Howe's debating style to "being savaged by a dead sheep". Nonetheless, this statement to the Commons has entered the annals of momentous political speeches. It is seen as central to Michael Heseltine's race for leadership, and the vital first step towards reconciling that "tragic conflict of loyalties" which had driven Howe from the cabinet.

"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. It risks minimising our influence and maximising our chances of being once again shut out.

I believe that both the Chancellor and the governor are cricketing enthusiasts, so I hope that there is no monopoly of cricketing metaphors. 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 Labour councillor and blogger Bob Piper says: "This speech, though lacking the oratory of Obama, King or Kennedy, was superbly crafted and hit its target right between the eyes. Two weeks later, she was gone. A joy to behold."

And the blogger Cath Elliott says: "Maybe it's not a great speech as far as speeches go, but it was certainly historic -- an event that a lot of people remember with great fondness."

Robin Cook, 2003

Robin Cook, resignation speech, House of Commons, March 2003.  

In March 2003, Robin Cook resigned from the cabinet, saying: "I can't accept collective responsibility for the decision to commit Britain now to military action in Iraq without international agreement or domestic support."

He received an unprecedented standing ovation from fellow MPs on all sides of the House, for what Andrew Marr described as being "without doubt one of the most effective, brilliant resignation speeches in modern British politics". In it, he offered a prescient critique of the case for war, in particular the likely casualties and the assessment of Iraq's military threat.

Cook died of a heart attack two years later. The epitaph on his gravestone reads: "I may not have succeeded in halting the war but I did secure the right of parliament to decide on war."

"Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years, and which we helped to create?
From the start of the present crisis, I have insisted, as Leader of the House, on the right of this place to vote on whether Britain should go to war. It has been a favourite theme of commentators that this House no longer occupies the central role in British politics. Nothing could better demonstrate that they are wrong than for this House to stop the commitment of troops in a war that has neither international agreement nor domestic support."

The blogger Sarah Ruth Webster says: "I remember feeling a mixture of exultation -- that a prominent MP was finally saying what seemed so painfully obvious about the push to war -- and massive despair that these things could only be said on the way out from the cabinet."

The blogger Tom Miller says: "A man had been pushed from the centre of government to its margins, and had to leave a government he had believed in. His speech comprehensively destroyed the arguments for war, for unilateralism, and for violation of international law. The Telegraph called those against the war 'useful idiots'. Now the majority accept that Cook was right."