Don't cry for Mr Murdoch

She would be better advised bewailing her own credibility and that of her party leader David Cameron.

Mensch described the committee's majority report, supported by Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs, as "partisan" as though issues of party political advantage never enter a Tory's head.

Her description of Murdoch as one of the world's greatest newspapermen suggests either that she has slept through every committee session or that she has fallen for the News Corporation proprietor's fairy tales about knowing or remembering nothing while being belatedly sorry for any inconvenience caused.

His organisation is not simply guilty of playing fast and loose with the rules but of operating an extensive conspiracy that hired criminals and subverted Parliament and police by bribery and bullying.

The Murdoch empire thought itself untouchable because of its symbiotic relationship with successful politicians, allying itself with Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and, briefly, Gordon Brown before hooking up with Cameron when Brown appeared dead in the water.

Cameron's decision to appoint former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his communications director after Coulson had resigned in the wake of royal correspondent Clive Goodman's jailing in 2007 for illegally intercepting phone messages was meant to cement the News Corporation-Tory alliance.

It was assisted by the fact that the husband of Coulson's successor as News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks was an old Etonian schoolfriend of Cameron and that the pair went riding together, with the Tory leader atop Raisa, the horse given to Brooks by the Metropolitan Police.

Links between the Murdoch empire and the Tory Party elite are deep. They have been personal, political and mutually beneficial.

No wonder Mensch and her fellow Tory MPs on the culture, media and sport committee felt unable to swallow Tom Watson's eminently reasonable and justifiable comment about Murdoch's fitness.

The evidence left all committee members, Tories included, with no alternative but to support conclusions that Murdoch had avoided taking steps to find out the truth about phone hacking, had turned a blind eye to revelations and "exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications."

Even this charitable reading of his conduct, together with that of his son James as chief executive of News Corp Europe and Asia, would condemn the duo as failing to ensure effective and legal corporate governance.

Claiming to have been kept in the dark or dispensing a gentle slap on their own wrists for not asking enough questions will not wash.

It might do the trick for the Tories who'd prefer to draw a line under a scandal that has exemplified the Murdoch empire's corruption of public life, but we have to appreciate the scale of their crimes, as Labour MP Tom Watson has been intent on doing.

Referring to the shame, the lies, the cheating, blackmail and bullying, Watson commented that "we should all be ashamed when we think how we cowered before them for too long."

Ofcom's choice of approving the empire's complete takeover of BSkyB or of ordering it to reduce its stake substantially should be influenced by awareness of the depths plumbed by News International on the Murdochs' watch.