Given how much explaining he had to do, Max Mosley could not have asked for a more congenial setting in which to do it.

The president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), filmed earlier this year in a five-hour orgy with prostitutes in prison uniforms, sought to clear his name yesterday in a closed meeting at the organisation's Paris headquarters. A lawyer offered evidence that appeared to support him, but no one made a formal case against him and there were no questions. A secret ballot followed, which he won. The FIA has not just made a mockery of transparency. By 103 votes to 55, its members have embarrassed themselves, the sponsors who pour millions into Formula One and the drivers who compete for its prizes.

When Mr Mosley tried his own hand at motor racing in the 1960s, he was delighted when his fellow drivers asked if he was related to Alf Mosley, the builder of British buses. They seemed not to know about his father, the founder of British fascism, or not to care, which gave rise to a remark that has haunted his son these past three months: “It's always been a bit like that in motor racing,” he mused. “Nobody gives a damn.” In the FIA's foetid inner circles, this may be true. In the wider world it is demonstrably false.

Mr Mosley is a public figure who made a fool of himself in circumstances that gave rise to the perception that he was not just a sexual adventurer, but an offensive and degrading one at that. He insists that these claims are false. Courts in London and Paris may yet agree, but they will not change the simple truth that, were he a politician or a CEO, Mr Mosley would have been forced to resign months ago. He should, too, even now.