The political response to the riots has been fascinating. After a delay because they were away on holiday, the politicians returned and 'took control' - at least they tried to. As Sir Hugh Orde says, and this seems a realistic analysis, the key politicians - neither the Prime Minister nor the Home Secretary - did anything operational that was not already being done. The police had (like us all, to be honest - look at last week's papers and the initial page 5 coverage of Mark Duggan's death if you want to check ...).been caught with an unexpected explosion of looting. They had recent experience of both purely peaceful mass protest and some anarchic destructive behaviour, but this was different. But the police rapidly adapted their tactics to deal with the new situation, and all praise to them for that.
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