Long life | 6 September 2012

While cocking a snook at the United States to help him win next year’s presidential election, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador has shown callous indifference to the welfare of his diplomats in London whom he has effectively drafted into the service of a very tricky and unpredictable master in the person of Julian Assange. The founder of WikiLeaks thinks that his sojourn in the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge will last only six months to a year, because he expects Sweden to have dropped its sex allegations against him by then; but even that may be more than enough time to reduce his hosts to a state of quivering rage and resentment. For the embassy is small, it has no bedrooms and no garden, and Assange is by all accounts not only strange in his habits but also extremely self-confident and bossy.

The Guardian recently published a series of interviews under the headline ‘Who is Julian Assange? By the people who know him best’, and it was notable that even his greatest fans found him somewhat odd and bristly.