Title: Margaret Thatcher
Content: 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

Title: Geoffrey Howe
Content: area of need. After the 1983 general election Thatcher reluctantly appointed Howe Foreign Secretary, a post he held for six years, the longest tenure since Sir Edward Grey in 1905 to 1916. With "the quiet determination" applied in the Treasury he set off on a tour of Warsaw Pact countries, interviewing communist leaders and sounding out opponents. The trip opened the way to further discussions with Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom he believed Thatcher shared "extraordinary chemistry." He later looked back on this period (1983–85) as his happiest, and most fruitful and productive, engaging with world leaders across the summit table,

Title: Margaret Beckett
Content: Cabinet meetings. Hoon and Beckett were said to have a difficult ministerial relationship. As Foreign Secretary, Beckett came in for some trenchant criticism. According to "The Times", she did not stand up well in comparison with the previous Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. "The Spectator" described her as, "at heart, an old, isolationist, pacifist Leftist" and called on her to resign, and the "New Statesman" accused her of allowing the Foreign Office to become subservient to 10 Downing Street after the tenures of Jack Straw and Robin Cook. In August 2006, 37 Labour Party members in her Derby South constituency left

Title: Peter Carington, 6th Baron Carrington
Content: Nkomo, and Josiah Tongogara, which brought to an end Rhodesia's Bush War. He later expressed his support for Mugabe over Smith. He was Foreign Secretary in 1982 when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands. Although not immediately responsible, he nevertheless took full responsibility for the complacency of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and its failures to foresee this development, or rather for the misleading signals the Foreign Office sent under his leadership on British intentions on retaining control over the Falklands, and, on 5 April, resigned; Thatcher was sorry to see him go. Since his resignation, no other member of the

Title: 1990 Conservative Party (UK) leadership election
Content: November 1990. Following Thatcher's formal resignation as Prime Minister, Queen Elizabeth II invited Major to form a government the next day. Douglas Hurd was re-appointed as Foreign Secretary and Michael Heseltine returned to the Cabinet as Environment Secretary, a post he had held in the early 1980s. Both Hurd and Heseltine remained key figures during the Major government, Heseltine eventually rising to become Deputy Prime Minister in 1995. Major's premiership began well, and he was credited with restoring a consensual style of Cabinet government after the years of forceful leadership under Thatcher. The success of the First Gulf War in

Question: Who was the last foreign secretary to serve in Margaret Thatcher's cabinet, an MP who also contested the leadership after her resignation?
Answer: Douglas Hurd