Last night I attended a debate on Zimbabwe, organized by Intelligence Squared and The Spectator. The motion was:
Britain has failed ZimbabweBeforehand there were 343 for, 155 against, and 230 don't knows; afterwards support for the motion had increased significantly, the breakdown now being 455 for, 103 against, and 35 don't knows. There is an account of the debate by Lloyd Evans here and you can listen to the whole thing by downloading an MP3 from the Spectator site.
The evening was an excellent advertisement for the series in which it figured: informative, well-organized, and chaired in a firm and efficient way. In my own view, those speaking against the motion were at a disadvantage because of the way in which it had been framed. Much of their argument revolved around the perfectly reasonable thesis that the heaviest responsibility for Zimbabwe's decline lay with Robert Mugabe himself and his core supporters, and that once it had achieved independence that country's fortunes and misfortunes should no longer be attributed primarily to the former colonial power. But these claims are consistent with the terms of the motion - which does not say that Britain bears the main or the sole responsibility for the country's present turmoil, but merely that Britain has failed Zimbabwe. For this contention, the three speakers supporting the motion gave more than enough evidence.