Every one of us should feel abject shame for the despicable behaviour of the Blair government towards white Zimbabwean farmers.

There is only one word for its failure to lift a finger to help the farmers in their desperate predicament. It is racism.

It is flagrant, anti-white racism as appalling as that displayed by the black dictator Robert Mugabe himself.

So let us not mince words and contrive any liberal, woolly-minded reasons for calling it anything else.

If a white president was having blacks beaten, tortured and murdered, their farms stolen and handed out to cronies, and all the other atrocities Mugabe is ultimately responsible for, there would be an international hue and cry, world wide condemnation and demands for his removal.

But because a black leader is doing it to whites, white leaders around the world simply wring their hands and do nothing.

Black leaders, especially South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, who really could make a difference if he felt so inclined, do not even bother wringing their hands.

It is almost as though there is a conspiracy among western governments to ignore it all because in some bizarre way they reckon white farmers in Zimbabwe "should have known what was coming to them".

Which makes it all the more creditable that America's chief of African policy, Walter Kansteiner, has made a fierce attack on Mugabe this week.

But while describing Mugabe as an illegitimate ruler who won power by fraud, which is absolutely accurate, he stopped short of demanding a change of regime or threatening any kind of trade embargo.

Disappointingly, he then went on to mouth meaningless assurances that he was working with South Africa, Botswana and Mozambique on isolating Mugabe.

That kind of facile claim rather diminishes the impact of his condemnation of Mugabe's seizure of white owned farms as "morally disgusting madness set to trigger a wholly avoidable famine".

I came to know Zimbabwe well during my time as a southern African commentator for the BBC and was always impressed by the lush fertility of its farmlands and the supreme skills of the white farmers who tended them.

There was not just enough food for the 12 million population. There was also enough to help less fortunate African countries and to export internationally.

Which is why Mugabe's talk of land reform is nothing more than racist hypocrisy.

He is handing over all the best farms to incompetents - his family and supporters and even his wife has grabbed one of the very best spreads for herself, ordering the elderly white owners off the land.

During and after the Lancaster House independence talks in London in 1980, I watched the rise and rise of Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party. My colleagues and I (and the cynical Foreign Office) already knew exactly what Mugabe was capable of.

The only surprise is it has taken him so long to reveal himself as the monster he really is.