Horse emerges as emblem of British scandal At the end of another nagging week of damaging revelations about Rupert Murdoch's tabloid newspapers, Scotland Yard and the UK political elite, a horse emerged as the emblem of a very British scandal. The day after a senior police officer said The Sun had made illegal payments to a network of corrupted public officials, it emerged that Rebekah Brooks, its one-time editor, had been lent Raisa, a retired police horse, for two years. Downing Street officials at first denied any association between the horse and David Cameron, whose Oxfordshire home is close to that of Mrs Brooks and her husband Charlie, a close friend of the prime minister since Eton. Then Mr Cameron's office shied in the face of continued press questioning about Raisa before it emerged on Friday that he had in fact been riding with Mr Brooks some time before assuming office in 2010, and Raisa, a 16-hand bay mare, had indeed been his mount. Scotland Yard had already suffered embarrassment at the Leveson inquiry into press behaviour when senior officers struggled to justify their close relations with Mrs Brooks and her colleagues. "The intrinsic importance of this story is nil but the symbolic importance is immense," said Anthony King, professor of government at Essex University. You have in one story the prime minister of the country, a Rupert Murdoch crony, the Metropolitan Police and a horse - which in the UK is in itself a symbol of privilege. That package is why it has aroused such interest.