Peter Oborne, the paper’s chief political commentator and an award-winning author, announced his resignation in a blog on the openDemocracy website, in which he accused the Telegraph of committing a “fraud” on readers by burying reports on the HSBC tax scandal.

The journalist quoted a conversation with Murdoch MacLennan, chief executive of Telegraph Media Group, whom he said freely admitted that advertising was allowed to affect editorial at the paper...

...The Telegraph called Mr Oborne’s attack “full of inaccuracy and innuendo”. The paper denied that its editorial judgements had ever been compromised by commercial imperatives...