Leader: One belated resignation is not enough to lance this boil

IF THE belated resignation of News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks was intended to lance the boil of the biggest media scandal for a generation, there was little sign of the decibel count of this story falling yesterday.

In another day packed with developments, the beleaguered former News of the World editor released the full text of her resignation; Rupert Murdoch went to the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler to apologise for the phone-hacking and deletion of voicemails; full apologies are now to appear across national newspapers for the vile practices unearthed at the News of the World, and both Mr Murdoch and his son James have agreed to appear before a Commons committee next week.

Prime Minister David Cameron may have hoped the Brooks resignation would enable the company, in the emollient patter of public relations, to "draw a line and move on". That looked a distant possibility for him yesterday, with revelations that he had meetings with Murdoch executives on no less than 26 occasions in the first 14 months of his premiership. This would suggest his relationship with the Murdoch group was far from confined to hiring the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson or social gatherings in his constituency with Rebekah Brooks, but rather a serial relationship that begs searching questions about the extent of the Murdoch influence on UK government policy. The heat is not going out of this imbroglio any time soon, and may come to be felt if anything more intensely in Downing Street.

As for the media empire at the heart of it all, it has been a truly catastrophic week. The outrageous wrongdoings at the heart of this scandal have been magnified by inept corporate response at every turn: first the denials, then the statements of limitation ("one rogue reporter"), then the shutting down of the UK's best-selling newspaper, then the withdrawal of the bid for BSkyB, and finally the resignation of the chief executive. How differently it might have turned out had the order been reversed - that Rebekah Brooks accepted responsibility from the first and resigned promptly. This might have spared the group at least some of the massive public denunciation it has subsequently reaped. Much of this can be traced to the defiance of Rupert Murdoch himself, who made no secret that he despised British life and manners and has had that contempt hurled back at him. Only now has he appeared to grasp the magnitude of the lapses in his company and the suffering caused.

It is a text-book study in how flawed leadership can bring about a brand destruction more far-reaching than any externally inflicted wound. The grip he had on British political life has been broken. The survival of his company now hinges on the exit of Mrs Brooks being not the end, but the beginning of management departures.