England riots: Cameron and Miliband speeches and reaction – live

Rolling coverage as the PM and Labour leader make speeches setting out their competing analyses of the riots and looting 9.41am: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, famously said (as you can watch for yourself on YouTube ). And today David Cameron and Ed Miliband are going to embrace the Emanuel spirit by delivering big speeches on the riots designed to reap some political capital from last week’s mayhem on the streets. As an opposition leader Cameron argued that parts of society were “broken” and that Britain needed some big society-led moral renewal. Today he’s going to revive that campaign, arguing that the riots were a “wake-up call”. Miliband has also been calling some kind of ethical renaissance, centred around the theme of responsibility. He has accused bankers, MPs and journalists of all failing to act responsibly (see, for example, the speech he gave during the phone-hacking crisis ) and today he will link this kind of professional immorality with the behaviour the rioters. For both leaders, these are arguments that go to the core of why they’re in politics. Matthew D’Ancona interviewed Cameron in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday and D’Ancona said he had never seen Cameron “so animated, so consumed by a sense of urgency”. Toby Helm accompanied Miliband on a trip to Tottenham for the Observer and he said that Miliband could not walk more than a few paces without residents “grabbing his arm and pouring out their hearts”. Last week Cameron and Miliband largely avoided partisan comments on the riots, instead focusing on condemnation and on the importance of order being restored. But now ideology and party politics are back in business. Cameron is due to speak at 10am and Miliband at 10.30am. We’ve already got a story up containing extracts from their speeches , but I’ll be covering both of them live and providing a full analysis afterwards. Last week Nick Robinson (and others) predicted that that the riots were going to dominate the leaders’ speeches at the party conferences. Those speeches are often the most important in the political calendar. Today it will be as if we’re getting a preview. UK riots Ed Miliband David Cameron Crime Police Metropolitan police Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk

Posted by on August 15, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.