Pity the bien-pensants. Only five years ago, life was so simple. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden were heroes, defending individual freedom and privacy against the depredations of overweening state power. Western intelligence agencies were the arch-villains, reckless and unaccountable snoopers. Nato was an anachronism and worries about Russia were strictly for scaremongers. Facebook was a nice way of sharing information and keeping up with your friends. Antisemitism was bad, and so was Israel.

Now everything looks more complicated. Mr Assange’s hosts at the Ecuadorean embassy in London have removed his internet access after he issued a series of tweets implicitly backing the Russian approach to the nerve-agent attack in Salisbury. Many of his fans had already lost patience, finding the Wikileaks founder divisive, duplicitous and