The most serious casualty of the Commonwealth debacle in Coolum, Australia, is not the people of Zimbabwe, who have waited in vain for the organisaion to assert its professed democratic values, but the Commonwealth itself.

No one should have exprected a voluntary grouping of 54 members operating by consensus to shift an obdurate dictator. But the compromise cobbled together yesterday - in which Australia, South Africa and Nigeria will decide whether to suspend Zimbabwe, depending on the conduct of the next week's elections - will prove inconsequential.