It was always a peculiar country. Years ago, it was run by its white minority in pretty much the same way as England is run. There was a Parliament which was elected by the whites and, when a party lost an election, it gave way to the party which won. There were judges and jury trials and, by and large, the outcomes of court cases were fair and even the government respected them.

There was an almost complete absence of corruption. You could rely on officials to make honest decisions and, if you owned something, you could be sure the police or the courts would restore it to you, even if it was a powerful person who had taken it away.

It was terribly unfair on the blacks, but the country was orderly and order produced wealth. Ordinary people in Rhodesia – and most ordinary people were black – had longer, richer, healthier, more secure lives than most people in Africa. They were able to plan for the future. The chap who ran the government was called Ian Smith and we all knew he was wicked. We thought he was so wicked we persuaded our government to enforce sanctions against his government and bring it down. And we succeeded!

His government was destroyed and, after setting up a new, fair system in its place and setting up a huge subsidy regime to help it on its way, we scurried off.

We have now had the opportunity to consider what we achieved. We have paid a little more tax, to provide the subsidies. We have watched our kith and kin dispossessed and their life's work destroyed. We have watched the ordinary black people of Zimbabwe being devastated. They live much shorter, poorer, sicker and less secure lives than before our intervention. And we have watched our dream of a colour blind democracy turn to ashes. The truth is, as we now see plainly, the wishes of ordinary black people count for no more under Mr Mugabe than they did under Mr Smith.

In a nutshell, from the best possible motives and at enormous expense to ourselves, we have made the lives of millions of black people incomparably worse. I, for one, feel like a complete plonker.

As I write this column, I have a worry. There is a chap in Zimbabwe called Morgan Tsvangirai. The only things I know about him are that he is black, that he is fat, that our government has promised to give him even more subsidy, if he gains control, than it gave to Mr Mugabe and that the people who voted for Mr Mugabe have now voted for him. They made a terrible mistake with Mr Mugabe and I do not know why we think they have done any better this time.

Why should we give him our money?