³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

Ìý

Commentators compare David Cameron and Ed Miliband's speeches on how to react to riots.

that the dividing lines between David Cameron and Ed Miliband are becoming clearer:

"Cameron argues that these riots were about culture not poverty, Miliband thinks you can't ignore inequality. Cameron believes that society needs two parent families, Miliband that it is about parental responsibility. Cameron doesn't want an enquiry, Miliband does."

that the political battle superseded the war on the streets:

"The suspicion that August 2011 marked the first recreational riots has bolstered David Cameron's conviction that a weak and 'demoralised' state has allowed society to rot from the bottom up. Ed Miliband, by contrast, singled out top-down greed and a 'values crisis' underlying community ferment. And so, in competing speeches, the first salvoes were fired in the struggle for the soul and votes of Britain. The decisions made in the next, defining days and weeks will either render society better, safer and more prosperous, or ordain a tailspin of decline."

that it was less about the speeches themselves than the underlying contest for how the riots are understood:

"For Cameron, they need to be seen as a question of personal responsibility and personal morality. That way he can repackage the broken society. Moral rearmament pleases his long-standing critics on the right and feeds into his broader programme of welfare and educational reform. It also gives him an opportunity to sharpen the message: that, for example, the welfare state denies moral hazard... Of course, the prime minister has to appear to know what he's doing. Miliband doesn't have that burden. He can afford to sound cautious and to appeal for time, to argue that the underlying causes of riots are much more complex and less open to easy answers. He can afford to call for a commission of inquiry, and he is right to."

that, in political terms, the strategy adopted by Ed Miliband has more risks:

"A call for understanding - the word Cameron was careful not to utter - was the centrepiece... By taking this line, the Labour leader risks being accused of making excuses for rioting and looting. His answer to the charge is that choosing a 'simplistic' answer to a complex question is 'not strength but an absolute abdication of responsibility.' To buttress his case, he quoted words by a previous opposition leader who believed 'there are connections between circumstances and behaviour' - David Cameron. Even if the Labour leader's strategy fails, Miliband can draw comfort from the fact that at last he is getting a hearing. The debate over the riots features Cameron versus Miliband, not Cameron versus Clegg, or the Tory right. If it works, Miliband will cast himself as the voice of reason who kept calm in a crisis, and will show up David Cameron as a man who said one thing when the going was easy and another in tough times. It is risky strategy, but it may work."

speed of reaction is the main difference between Mr Cameron and Mr Miliband:

"In recent days, Mr Cameron's rhetoric has been relentlessly focused on tough criminal justice responses - be it depriving offenders of benefits, banning teenagers from wearing face masks or hiring a New York super cop to bring America's ways to London streets. But the speed with which all these ideas are being churned out only exposes the prime minister to the claim, made by Ed Miliband, Labour leader, that these are 'knee jerk' responses."