When your hare is cornered and your rifle sights are trained, why tell it that you have a nuclear weapon primed in a nearby silo?
What confuses me about Britain threatening to revoke the Ecuadorian embassy’s diplomatic status if it helps Julian Assange further is this: when your hare is cornered and your rifle sights are trained, why tell it that you have a nuclear weapon primed in a nearby silo?
The Foreign Office says that it was trying to give Ecuador the ‘full picture’, but it seems like a heavy-handed tactic that has backfired, by riling Ecuador even more. If they now give in and refuse Assange asylum (which is unlikely), it would be portrayed as obeying the UK’s threats. Out of sheer bloody-mindedness, even, they might do it.
The UK still has options. Julian Assange is in a locked room mystery of his own devising: he has only one exit from the embassy, and as soon as he sets foot on non-diplomatic soil the police will nab him. He can’t be smuggled out in a diplomatic bag nor can he be made a diplomat.
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But showing our hand when all parties are deciding whether to stick or twist was foolish.
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