There was a big attendance of legal glitterati at last week's annual president's dinner for the Academy of Experts at the Royal Over-Seas League in London's St James's. The Lord Chancellor was there with the chairman of the Bar Council, as was a slew of High Court judges. But the big turn of the evening was the actual president of the academy himself, Lord Howe of Aberavon CH QC, né Geoffrey Howe, formerly Margaret Thatcher's longest-serving cabinet minister. On the night, the assembled diners learned little about Lord Howe's views on either the legal profession or experts, with his most interesting revelation being the hardly surprising news that he wasn't very good at games at school. But his presence put Obiter in mind of the role he played ultimately in relation to the Iron Lady and any lessons that may provide for today's leaders. Lord Howe was no political QC - he earned his spurs the hard way, being called to the bar in 1952 and taking silk in 1965, well before he got anywhere near government. Of course, the former Labour Chancellor, Denis Healey, immortalised Lord Howe, describing an attack launched by him as 'like being savaged by a dead sheep'. But he was actually a sheep with sharp teeth, as Mrs Thatcher discovered in 1990 when his resignation speech from the cabinet triggered her prime ministerial demise. What are the odds on the current embattled prime minister receiving the same sort of coup de grâce from a silk in his cabinet? Stand up Lord Falconer? Brave punters only for that bet.