The latest to go on the offensive is Tom Tugendhat, a shadow cabinet member, who has accused Keir Starmer of a "failure of leadership", saying that the prime minister "fell short" in the first test of his premiership. Tugendhat then extended his criticism to operational matters not normally intruded upon by politicians, suggesting that police officers had not acted "without fear or favour" during some of the counterdemonstrations.
What else have they been saying?
While Kemi Badenoch and Mel Stride have kept their own counsel, each of the other four candidates has directly criticised the prime minister. As well as the bald allegation of "failure", Tugendhat, a former security minister, said that the unrest "could, and should, have been stopped earlier". He argued that the lessons of the 2011 riots had not been applied, and that a high-level Cobra meeting should have been convened sooner, with more police deployed and the army used for "back-up office duties".
Starmer's "standing army" of police was derided as "in truth a PR line, not a policy".
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