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Emily Thornberry, the UK's shadow foreign secretary, told BBC's Today programme: “I’m not going to shed any tears for the death of Mugabe.
“He took over a country when it had such promise, and we were all so hopeful… but he completely lost his way and I think helped to ruin the chance of a country that did have a great future."
The UK's relations with Zimbabwe deteriorated when Labour came to power in 1997 with Tony Blair as prime minister.
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When asked what Mr Blair’s government policies achieved on Zimbabwe, Ms Thornberry said:
“I am not going to pretend that it was anything other than a manifest failure.
“It was very difficult to shift a man who managed to gather power completely to himself and was not going to listen and increasingly didn’t listen, and who was simply interested in entrenching himself and didn’t care about the poorest in his country.
“When he first came to power (in 1980), many of us genuinely believed that he did, and that he would make a difference to Zimbabwe.”
