Assange is released – but there is still a danger to press freedom 

James Cleverly may now be a care-and-maintenance Home Secretary, but even so he will be heaving a sigh of relief as he finally tapes up the file on Julian Assange. The Australian journalist and WikiLeaks founder was on the point of being extradited to the US for revealing state secrets obtained from agents in that country. Last night we heard that Assange’s lawyers had closed a deal with American prosecutors. The arrangement is this. Assange voluntarily surrenders to US officials in the Marianas Islands; he pleads guilty to one offence of revealing US classified information, and gets five years. The court then providentially notices that he has already spent more than that in HMP Belmarsh, gives him credit for it, and releases him to fly to his native Australia. 

On one level this is splendid news. There is an obvious element of face-saving for the State Department, which you suspect was almost as weary of the Assange affair as the Home Office here.