Later, the pair, along with sundry other members of their protest team, were released after a dressing down for demonstrating without a permit. One can only wonder which ticking off, Mr Mugabe’s or Mr Tatchell’s, was the more strenuous one.An odd consequence of Mr Tatchell’s shift of campaigning emphasis is that in championing the removal of Mr Mugabe, he has become something of a darling of the right. Even the shadow Foreign Secretary, Michael Ancram, has urged Jack Straw to back Mr Tatchell’s suggestions. What a pity it is that he won’t.But when a government can’t even be relied upon to say whether or not Zimbabwe is at present a suitable place to play international cricket, it isn’t likely to suggest that maybe that country’s leader should be taken out of circulation. Why pick a wicked dictator up off the streets of a European capital, when the Prime Minister believes that the best way of removing wicked dictators is to bomb the entire population of the country instead?Mr Tatchell, by the way, is way ahead of both hawks and doves in his own analysis of what should be done about Saddam Hussein.

He rejects war, but dislikes the succour such a position gives to that dictator as well. He prescribes a regime-change-from-within strategy which involves funding satellite TV and radio stations to break Saddam’s media censorship, and allow the co-ordination of the mounting of a campaign of civil resistance in the country. He advocates training and arming opposition forces in the no-fly zones in the north and south. In this way, he contends, a civilian and military rebellion would avoid the accusation of neo-imperialism and create conditions that would be likely to ensure a more stable and enduring democracy. This, of course, is the very scenario that the US backed away from when the last Gulf war ended.In Zimbabwe though, Tony Blair has the opportunity to effect regime change with a simple arrest, without involving his great American ally and without the threat of war.Instead, Mr Blair, apart from being very, very angry with Mr Mugabe, is intent on not much more than being seen not to be involved. Negotiations have been feverish surrounding a summit in Lisbon, which the southern African countries say they will boycott if Zimbabwe is not represented, and which Mr Blair will not attend if Mr Mugabe does.

The expected compromise is that Zimbabwe’s foreign minister will attend instead.What I don’t understand though, is why Mr Blair is willing to argue for a huge great war in order to unseat one dictator, while he is not willing to countenance the Tatchell route, and risk a period of diplomatic chaos over the unseating of another. The cause is certainly just, because a regime change in Zimbabwe will be sure to save millions from death by malnutrition (at the moment food aid is given out according to political allegiance).Mr Tatchell doesn’t need an army to unseat a dictator, he just needs some friends at the top who will take up his blueprint. Surely it would be a positive step, to decide to arrest torturers, instead of attempting to reason with them. As for those who prefer torturers to Europeans, well they too will have to wake up to the fact that the best way of stopping Europe from sorting it out, is to sort it out themselves.