As Brooks goes is Murdoch in control or not?

When Peter Mandelson was on the brink of resigning from government the first time many people wondered how a man so expert at public relations and political instincts seemed to have so little understanding of his own position.

So it seems with the Murdochs and News Corp. A family and corporation so expert at communication, at capturing what the public wants and feels seems to have taken almost every wrong step possible handling the crisis.

It is hard to say Rebekah Brooks resigning is a mistake – apart from the clamour in Westminster, many of the journalists inside News International also thought she should go eventually and it would have been hard to survive the questioning she was facing on Tuesday.

But today’s decision does not mean she will escape giving evidence to Parliament. Her resignation now allows the campaigners (and this is a campaign, by some of the most wily political operators in the country) to focus on James and Rupert Murdoch.

The “firewall” or “lightning conductor” function that she was serving has gone. It would have been more sensible perhaps to pre-announce a resignation last week in the style of Tony Blair, announce a successor, but stay long enough to take the heat.

This was just the latest move that seems miscalculated. The closure of the News of the World had the opposite impact to the intended one. Instead of closing down the story and signalling contrition it suggested panic, that things were even worse than we’d feared and that the Murdochs were prepared to do almost anything and sacrifice almost any number of innocent staff in order to protect the circle at the top.

Channel 4 News live blog: Rebekah Brooks resigns over phone hacking

It followed an ill-advised round of interviews by the Corporate Affairs boss Simon Greenberg who was put out to bat on the stickiest of wickets while Rebekah Brooks was still supposedly in charge of investigating herself.

Throughout this the only journalist not to work for News Corp allowed to question a Murdoch was Tom Bradby of ITV News on the day the News of the World was closed. An organisation dedicated to holding others to account was failing to put itself open to question.

Nobody could withstand the onslaught from politicians and the media that Rupert Murdoch has faced – perhaps it is because we think of him as so invincible that we are surprised by his lack of footing.

But within days of saying Rebekah Brooks was his top priority she has gone, within hours of saying he wouldn’t appear before Parliament he changed his mind. Last night in his interview with his Wall Street Journal he insisted he would not sell the rest of his UK newspapers. None of us knows what to think now – it isn’t clear whether he is in control of his own destiny or not.

Follow @krishgm on Twitter.