MAIL COMMENT: Now let's strip the tyrant of his power

Of course, the gesture won't ease the suffering of Zimbabweans - and Mugabe himself will be shedding few tears.

No matter. His 1994 honour was a stain on Britain's integrity and an insult to the victims of his tyranny.

Tyrant: Robert Mugabe addresses his party supporters at a rally yesterday

Its removal reinforces the message that Mugabe is a pariah.

But now to practical matters.

The civilised world must urgently enforce sanctions, targeted on members of the regime.

The Mail recognises the West can't sever all trade with Zimbabwe without inflicting further hardship on ordinary people.

But as for Mugabe and his henchmen, all their assets must be seized and they and their families banned from leaving the country they have ruined.

Meanwhile, we repeat the question we asked yesterday, and which Stephen Glover eloquently poses today.

Why, when it was thought justifiable to invade Iraq, should the West regard it as unthinkable to confront a ramshackle army, install a legitimate government and bring Mugabe to justice?

After all, isn't the liberal Left still wringing its hands over our failure to intervene militarily in Rwanda?

What a moment equalities minister Harriet Harman has chosen to heap further burdens on British employers.

Here we are, heading for the worst economic storm for decades, with jobs at risk all over the country.

Yet here is this time-warp feminist (who despite being a woman has enjoyed every privilege Britain can offer!) jeopardising our competitiveness for a cause that lost all relevance to the real world long ago.

Ms Harman expects firms to waste time and money compiling ill-defined 'gender pay audits', while encouraging them to adopt 'positive discrimination' in favour of women. What a bonanza is in store for industrial tribunal lawyers.

Does she honestly believe these are priorities for Britain, at a time of cut-throat competition from China and India?

But there's something else she appears not to have noticed: the world has moved on, Ms Harman, since the bra-burning student demos of the 1960s.

Today, women are fast overtaking men in our universities, law schools and medical colleges.

Indeed, in our increasingly feminised education system it is boys and young men who are desperately falling behind.

But when did Ms Harman ever allow facts to interfere with ideology?

Remember how HM Revenue and Customs chairman Paul Gray was widely praised for sacrificing his job after his organisation lost the personal details of 25million parents and children?

Here at last, it appeared, was a senior public figure who was prepared to do the Honourable Thing and take full responsibility for the failings of his underlings.

After all, didn't Chancellor Alistair Darling assure us that only one junior official was personally to blame?

Suddenly the truth looks very different. First, it emerges that HMRC was riddled with complacency and carelessness from top to bottom while Mr Gray was in charge - systemic failings for which he was deeply culpable.

Now we learn that far from losing out, he waltzed away with a pay-off, said to be £400,000.

It's a wonder civil servants or bank directors ever try to succeed, when the rewards for failure are so vast.