A successful bid for British Sky Broadcasting would have given James Murdoch command of 60 per cent of News Corp’s earnings, cementing his status as heir presumptive to his 80-year-old father. “This deal was James’ baby,” said one person close to BSkyB. This week, that deal lies in tatters.

At the same time, a UK phone hacking scandal he was expected to resolve when he became chairman of News Corp Europe and Asia in 2007 has blown up, raising questions about his crisis management skills.

That crisis touched him directly last week, when he admitted that he had wrongly approved settlements with hacking victims without having “a complete picture” of the facts. Tom Watson, a Labour MP, dubbed the payments “an attempt to pervert the course of justice”.