Lord Howe, a senior Cabinet minister throughout the 1980s, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and then Foreign Secretary, is today most widely remembered for his resignation speech in which he turned to cricket to convey his opinion of Margaret Thatcher’s public rejection of British participation in the European single currency project.

This was, he said, “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”.

The speech, delivered in November 1990 in the House of Commons, is widely seen as a key moment in the chain of events that led to Mrs Thatcher’s resignation as Prime Minister later the same month, after eleven and a half years.

Its effect was probably amplified by Howe’s generally mild-mannered nature; Denis Healey, the senior Labour politician who himself died only last week, likened coming under attack from Howe to being “savaged by a dead sheep”.

Current Prime Minister David Cameron described Lord Howe, who was born in the South Wales steel town of Port Talbot, as “the quiet hero of the first Thatcher Government”.

George Osborne, the current Chancellor, said he was “a quietly-spoken radical”.