Her resignation gives Murdochs deniability - they can say that anything she says is not official NI business, and she is speaking as a private individual. I guess this is part of a damage limitation exercise now.

Won’t have that much of an excuse in the USA though.

Scotland Yard's most senior officers tried to convince the Guardian during two private meetings that its coverage of phone hacking was exaggerated and incorrect without revealing they had hired Neil Wallis, the former deputy editor of the News of the World, as an adviser.

The first meeting in December 2009, which included the Metropolitan police commissioner Paul Stephenson, was two months after Wallis was employed by the Yard as a public relations consultant.

Wallis, 60, who was deputy to Andy Coulson, the NoW editor at the time of the phone hacking, was arrested on Thursday as part of Operation Weeting. Coulson has also been arrested and bailed.

Theresa May, the home secretary, has referred Scotland Yard's hiring of Wallis to the judicial inquiry on phone hacking which will be chaired by Lord Justice Leveson.