主题：【原创】关注英国骚乱的对应方式 -- 琵琶湖

David Cameron and senior ministers will hold a second emergency meeting in Whitehall on Wednesday morning with the leadership of Scotland Yard to consider the impact of the beefed-up police operation in London overnight.

Amid the first signs of strains within the coalition over the response to the riots, government sources said the prime minister has called for an early assessment of the decision to increase police numbers in the capital from 6,000 to 16,000. Michael Gove, the education secretary, told Channel 4 News the police response had not been robust enough on Monday night.

The second Cobra meeting in less than 24 hours will be held as the prime minister prepares to report back to MPs on Thursday in an emergency session of parliament. Cameron, who flew back to Britain from his Tuscan holiday on a special RAF flight in the early hours of Tuesday, said that rioters and looters would feel the full force of the law.

Speaking in Downing Street after chairing a meeting of Cobra, the prime minister said: "These are sickening scenes – scenes of people looting, vandalising, thieving, robbing, scenes of people attacking police officers and even attacking fire crews as they're trying to put out fires. This is criminality, pure and simple, and it has to be confronted and defeated.

"I have this very clear message to those people who are responsible for this wrongdoing and criminality: you will feel the full force of the law and if you are old enough to commit these crimes you are old enough to face the punishment. And to these people I would say this: you are not only wrecking the lives of others, you're not only wrecking your own communities – you are potentially wrecking your own life too."

Cameron spoke after agreeing with the Met and Nick Clegg, who cut short a trip to the west country to attend yesterday's meeting, that police numbers should be more than doubled in London and that Scotland Yard should dramatically increase the number of arrests. By early evening on Tuesday the Met had made 563 arrests since the violence first erupted on Saturday night, leaving no spare police cells in the capital.

But there were tensions within the coalition as the government formulated its response to the riots. Clegg, who returned to work from his family holiday on Monday, was adamant that he should make an early visit to Tottenham, which was then the scene of the most serious disturbances.

It is understood that this was met with resistance by the Tories in Downing Street on Monday as they weighed up whether the prime minister should return home. "Nick was saying he should go to Tottenham," one source said. "There was a bit of a push back on the grounds that a visit would be seen as over the top and rewarding the looters. But Nick was very clear on Sunday night: he said he had to go to Tottenham. Looking back, that was the bare minimum."

Clegg, who was in close contact with Cameron on Monday as he decided whether to return home, was in complete agreement with the prime minister by the time they attended the Cobra meeting at 9am on Tuesday. The meeting was said to have been packed. "It was standing room only for less senior officials," one source said.

Ministers said they hoped the key signal of the day would be the increased arrests. One cabinet minister who attended the meeting said: "The most important thing are the arrests. There have been a lot more arrests. Now that people can see they won't get away with law breaking that should make a difference."

But ministers fear that "flash riots", organised on social media and BlackBerry Messenger, are almost impossible to control. "It has been very difficult to control these flash riots which appear to be organised on social media," the minister said. "We would have to be like the Chinese to stamp them all out."

Hours after the Cobra meeting the prime minister and his deputy had different experiences as they visited scenes of violence. Clegg was booed by crowds when he went on a walkabout in Birmingham city centre. "Go home," young people in the crowd shouted. "Go on – run, run run," they shouted as his car left the New Street area.

The prime minister had a less hostile reception when he visited Croydon in a more controlled meeting, where he met members of the Reeves family whose 144-year old furniture store was burnt down.