England riots: The conflict still to come

An emergency session of the Commons. A prime minister promising to track down and to punish wrongdoers. The leader of the opposition pledging to stand shoulder to shoulder with him.

It was as if the country was at war.

This was on the morning after the night on which the conflict on Britain's streets appeared to have halted.

The signs were there, though, of the political conflict to come.

Labour MPs lined up to demand a halt to planned cuts to police budgets and manpower.

One, the representative for what he called "war-torn" Croydon, described this "as the wrong policy at the wrong time".

In reply, David Cameron insisted that the problem was not future government cuts but current police practices which had kept too many officers stuck in their offices and off the front line.

He claimed that senior officers now accepted they'd got their tactics wrong.

When political hostilities recommence it will be a Conservative-led government challenging them and a Labour opposition rushing to their defence.