Gary McKinnon is accused of hacking into American military computers Photo: AP

Since it is now obvious that the British state is about to commit one of the most protoplasmic acts of self-abasement since Suez, and since the clock is now ticking to the moment when Gary McKinnon, 43, will be taken from his home in north London and put – if necessary by force – on a plane to America, it is time to pose the question everyone seems to have ignored.

Leave aside, for a moment, the morality of exporting the Asperger’s sufferer for trial in America. Can I ask, what is the point of having a trial at all? I simply do not understand what proposition is to be so expensively tested in this American courtroom.

The Prime Minister said the case raised a "number of issues", but claimed the public did not want the Home Secretary to get involved with all extradition requests from America.

Gary McKinnon, the British man facing extradition to the US to face trial for breaking into the Pentagon computer systems has been accused of 'the biggest hack of military computers ever' Photo: REUTERS

Campaigners will call on the US president to let Gary McKinnon face trial in his home country for breaking into Nasa and Pentagon networks, rather than sending him to America where he could be jailed for up to 60 years in a high-security prison.

They will say that the 43 year-old has Asperger syndrome – a type of autism that makes him shy and prone to obsessive behaviour – and warn that his condition would likely deteriorate were he to be taken away from his home and family then jailed abroad.