The case against Julian Assange has been a cruel folly. His

Successive home secretaries and the courts have been spineless in pandering to the US government

Almost obscured on its perch outside the Royal Courts of Justice, amid the crush of camera crews and vociferous supporters of Julian Assange, was the statue of Samuel Johnson, a man who also knew the importance of getting information out to as wide an audience as possible. “To keep your secret is wisdom,” is one of his better known observations, “but to expect others to keep it is folly.”

The high court decision to grant leave to appeal to Assange was a further reminder to the US authorities and their apologists in Britain of the folly inherent in their attempt to extradite and jail a man whose main offence is publishing the shameful secrets of the US government and its armed forces. In a just world, the court would have brought this whole absurd legal process to an end there and then, but the fact that an appeal has been granted is both a defeat for the US and renewed cause for hope for Assange.

Duncan Campbell is a freelance writer who worked for the Guardian as crime correspondent and Los Angeles correspondent