Is this the beginning of the end of Murdoch’s UK presence?

Parliament rose up against the man they cowered before til these last few weeks. And now Rupert Murdoch has decided he cannot resist that pressure. Moments after the Prime Minister left the Commons after announcing a judge-led public inquiry into what went wrong and how the media should change here, News Corp announced it was withdrawing the bid for the 61% of BSkyB it doesn’t own.

David Cameron had just announced one change that won’t wait for an inquiry. He said that contacts (actually, he said “meetings” but I can’t believe he’s going to try to ignore phone calls?) between senior politicians and press proprieters would  in future be publicly declared.

Every election, every broadcasting bill has been a moment for pressure and negotiation. Is that all over? The New York Times talked about a “British spring” earlier this week. How much does the landscape really change at  the end of all this? Is this the beginning of the end of Murdoch’s UK presence?

From the statement, David Cameron clearly hopes that the PCC can be replaced with something like the Advertising Standards Authority. The structure of the two-part inquiry is a bit of a muddle. The inquiry will not be able to look into the nuts and bolts of what went wrong until the police inquiry is finished but it will investigate and recommend on how the new media landscape should be shaped BEFORE that. Not quite “evidence-based” decision-making as you might normally expect it. “It’s a difficult situation,” a No. 10 source admitted, and “that’s the construction” of the inquiry.

I wonder if Lord Justice Leveson, who will lead the inquiry, has this piece framed on his loo wall?