In case you’ve forgotten, or have been confused by politicians who failed to mention it, let me remind you why I believe Julian Assange was in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years before he was ejected and arrested last week. I don’t believe it was for being a journalist or a truth-teller to power, and it wasn’t for releasing evidence of America’s war crimes. He was in the embassy because, in 2010, Sweden issued an international arrest warrant so that he might answer allegations of sexual assault and rape. Assange would not accept extradition, jumped bail in the UK and absconded.

So it was curious to hear Diane Abbott, when answering questions about Labour’s enthusiastic objection to Assange’s possible extradition to the US to face charges of involvement in a computer-hacking conspiracy, say those sexual assault charges were “never brought”. The allegations were made, she generously conceded, but the charges were never brought.

It is possible to believe Assange should not face extradition to the US, but perhaps take a look at why he jumped bail

Where to start with this? How about with the painfully obvious logical hole in the argument, that he jumped bail and was unavailable to be tried. That is why the charges were never brought. Integral to Abbott’s remarks is the implication that they were dropped because of some reason other than Assange’s escape. This suggests they were either not credible enough to be pursued, or dropped voluntarily, and therefore should not be the focus of the Assange case. This innocence-by-absence technical sophistry is at best ignorant, at worst, dishonest. One of the two charges actually expired, Assange was so successful in running down the clock.

It really doesn’t have to be this way. It is entirely possible to believe two things at the same time, that Assange should not face extradition to the US but that we should perhaps take a look at why he jumped bail and was in hiding for seven years. More than 70 MPs and peers have now written to Sajid Javid and Abbott, urging them to focus attention on the earlier Swedish investigations.

But Abbott would rather focus on the politics than on the justice. “We all know what this is about,” she continued, when pressed. “It’s not about the rape charges, serious as they are.” And there we have it. The rape charges are a distraction (“serious as they are”, of course). The conspiratorial “we all know what this is about” is a giveaway. Let’s not be naive, Abbott is signalling, and pretend this is about something as peripheral as sexual assault charges when there is serious business afoot. The Swedish women are a ploy, a ruse, a way to meddle with The Cause. They are a front. This is a man against The Man, we all know what this is about.

And yes, we do know what this is about. It’s about relegating women and sexual assault to the back of the issues queue. There is a tendency by some on the left to have a hierarchy of worthy causes. At the top is all the big banner stuff; the US, imperialism, neocolonialism, foreign policy. Further downstream are social justice and economic redistribution. And all the way at the bottom of the waterfall are those who don’t fit quite as neatly on one side or the other of the ideological odyssey between good and evil. Women have pesky gender issues that break the solidarity with men, and if we are to protect the workers, how do all the immigrants fit in to that?

Assange trips all the big-issue wires. Why else would Jeremy Corbyn, a man who has been listless on Brexit, the biggest political crisis in a generation, be so quick off the blocks to call for the British government to block Assange’s extradition? This is but the latest indication of what I always suspected, that Corbyn is neither a closet remainer nor a Brexiteer; his only secret is his indifference to the messy issue where there is no clear David or Goliath. A case like Assange’s gets to the heart of the whole resistance effort against big monopolistic powers victimising the little people.

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The whole bro-against-the-machine shtick attracts women as well. Assange’s patrons have included Jemima Khan, Vivienne Westwood, who in turn attacked Khan for abandoning Assange, and, most lately and bizarrely, Pamela Anderson. But to thrive in the man-led resistance, these women must also adopt the blinkered view that men of the left are on their side, and so are to be protected, even from other women. Assange’s threatened victimisation by the US would be a worrying precedent and a reason not to extradite him, but that does not mean that sexual assault allegations should be brushed aside. “In this country we have protections for whistleblowers,” Abbott tweeted. “Julian Assange is not being pursued to protect US national security. He is being pursued because he has exposed wrongdoing by US administrations.” It also seems that, in this country, as long as we have the same enemies, we condone the protection of those who flee sexual assault allegations.

• Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist