Steer clear of the witch-hunt mob

WELL, it would be so easy to join in the hunt of Julian Assange and Shamima Begum. And that’s why I won’t. I still think that taking away someone’s citizenship is a despot’s action. As for legal aid, it absolutely has to be available for unpopular people, or we are ruled by the mob. Let us hear her case, and the Government’s, in court. This is what civilised people do. As for Mr Assange, I don’t believe most of what is now being said about him by people who have ruthlessly thrown him to the wolves and are perhaps a bit ashamed of having done so.

And while some of the things he has done have been rash and wrong, I suspect that what the USA really holds against him is the thing he did that was right – when he exposed the July 2007 attack on a Baghdad street by two US Apache helicopters, in which several innocents died, and some of the soldiers laughed. It was, alas, the truth about war.