WHAT cause, other than indulging her own self-esteem for her era as Premier, was served by Baroness Thatcher's controversial speech last night, we are not sure - but, certainly, Tory party unity was not one of them.

Far from it, in fact.

This was a withering attack on John Major's leadership.

The party's policies and performance had not lived up to its analysis and principles, she said.

And ripping open the split in the party - gaping still after two dramatic defections - she rubbished its left-wing and the one-nation tradition in the Conservatives.

Indeed, it was almost remarkable that she had any bile to spare for an attack on Labour.

However, much as this may have delighted the Euro-hostile raving right, it is perhaps worth remembering that the supposedly better management of the country's affairs during the Thatcher era ended because the Tories were eager to ditch her and the "isms" she espoused before the voters threw them out wholesale.

So last night's damaging display from her might be put down to the bitter response of a loser whose time is well past.

But, really, if she is happy to pour contempt on the one-nation Tory ideal, she can at least claim the credentials for having wrecked it herself.

She may earn a place in history as the destroyer of overweening trade union power in this country and of monolithic state industries that wasted taxpayers' money by the millions.

But one has only to recall the poll tax riots, nigh-insurrection on the streets of our cities, the turmoil in the NHS and the economic strategies that created today's high-tax hangover to be aware that Mrs Thatcher did a good job of creating disunity in the country.

And for her to parade that legacy as a better way, and to deliberately create Tory disunity by doing so, is a folly born of vanity.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.