LONDON — Often frivolous and meandering, the British election campaign has found a clear focus in these closing days: It's security — and Theresa May's record on it.

The shock of two terrorist attacks in as many weeks is casting a spotlight on policing, intelligence and counterterrorism and May's oversight of this domain, first as the longest-serving home secretary since World War II and for the past year as prime minister. The final arguments concern what she did or didn't do, and who's best placed to lead the U.K. into the future.

Notably if somewhat incongruously, the prime minister and her opponent Jeremy Corbyn seem to see in security a winning hand for themselves. Both can't be right, of course. But their ability to tap into the national mood in a way that resonates before Thursday's election may help decide the outcome, and shape the British approach to fighting terrorism for years to come.

Duelling press conferences

To the Tories, the prime minister's strength is her reputation as an experienced and tough "securocrat," which her campaign contrasts with Corbyn's perceived weaknesses on security. His alleged associations with the IRA and past opposition to anti-terror laws leave him exposed to Tory attacks. Yet the Labour campaign has turned the attention as well to what it perceives as May's own underappreciated vulnerability: her responsibility for cuts in police funding pushed through by her successive Conservative governments.

Neither May nor the Labour leader wasted any time to pivot hard to security hours after three assailants killed seven people near London Bridge. Early on Sunday, the prime minster made an angry — and to most ears, unusually political — statement outside No. 10 Downing Street that "enough is enough" and pledged a crackdown on "Islamist extremism." Later that evening, Corbyn responded in political kind, accusing May of shortchanging police and attempting to "protect the public on the cheap."

The two kept it up in duelling press conferences on Monday. May returned to the Whitehall library where a year ago she launched her bid to lead the Conservative party to talk about leadership. Corbyn would have no time for “learning on the job,” she said. Corbyn, in turn, pointed to a fall of almost 20,000 in the number of police officers since 2010 — even calling on May to resign over the issue.

Soon after, Labour gathered union leaders to highlight the cost of austerity to front-line emergency services imposed by Conservative governments. “Nobody here will say: ‘If it wasn’t for this cut, that wouldn’t have happened,'” Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union, which represents the police, said at the event. “It would be folly to say so. But what we can say is that the figures speak for themselves and questions need to be asked.”

Police cut, MI5 protected

If facts matter, Labour’s attack line on cuts is well-founded insofar as the police are concerned. Government figures show the total number of officers in England and Wales fell from 143,734 in March 2010 to 124,066 in March 2016. In the same time period, the number of armed officers fell from 6,653 to 5,639.

The commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick, was careful not to wade into a political row when she appeared BBC Radio 4’s Today program Monday, but did say that the police and security services had to “step up their game” in countering terrorism and that included the need "to look at” resourcing.

On Tuesday, London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan, who had stayed above the political fray since Saturday’s attack, joined the chorus of criticism from his party, warning that further planned cuts to police budgets could “make it harder to foil future terrorist attacks.” In a statement issued overnight, Khan said he was “deeply concerned” about the funding plans outlined by the Conservatives, which he said would represent a £400 million cut to the Metropolitan Police budget, and the loss of “thousands of community police officers” who he called "the eyes and ears of the security services, providing the intelligence and information that allows us to disrupt attempted terrorist attacks.”

In defending her record during her press conference, May pointed out that despite the wider cuts, counter-terrorism budgets had been protected. "The commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has said that the Met is well-resourced, and they are, and that they have very powerful counterterrorism capabilities, and they do. We have protected counterterrorism policing budgets," she told journalists gathered at the headquarters of the Royal United Services Institute.

The same goes for the domestic intelligence services, said Malcolm Rifkind, a former Conservative foreign secretary and ex-chair of parliament’s intelligence and security committee. “The resources for the security services have increased dramatically over the last 10 years since the 2005 London bombings,” he said.

According to government figures, spending on the security and intelligence agencies — domestic security service MI5, foreign intelligence service MI6 and surveillance agency GCHQ — increased from £1.93 billion in 2010-2011 to £2.34 billion in 2015-2016.

Praising May’s record at the Home Office, Rifkind said that the security services would be “deeply disappointed” they had been unable to prevent the recent attacks, but said there was a limit to what additional resourcing of police and security services could do.

"The real practical issue is not the number of police," he added. "The practical problem is that MI5 and the intelligence agencies have literally thousands of individuals on their books who are known to have radical opinions ... Even when they have reason to suspect such individuals to be moving in that direction, the law does not allow [the security services to take action] and you can never have sufficient manpower to have 24-hour surveillance of thousands of people, or hundreds of people.”

Conservative government cuts to police showed “a callous disregard for our safety,” said Manuel Cortes the general secretary of the TSSA union that represents British Transport Police staff.

David Wells, a former intelligence officer at GCHQ, said that it was too early to pin any blame on the intelligence services, but warned that the next government, of whichever stripe, would find “no quick fixes” to the terror threat facing Britain.

“As of the London Bridge attack it’s too early to determine if it was a failure of security services … Yes, you could hire new personnel but it would take time to train and vet them," he said.

'Dereliction of duty'

While chinks in May’s armor are hard to find with regards to the security services, she may be more vulnerable to questions about the austerity agenda’s impact on front-line public services during her years at the Home Office.

In his first speech after the attack, Corbyn on Sunday night attempted to capture the mood of gratitude to the police and other emergency services by reminding voters that he was the candidate promising to give public sector workers a pay rise. “They cannot just get warm words for their heroism, they deserve our respect every day,” he said.

The strategy of linking the attacks to austerity is not universally backed within Labour.

The strategy of linking the attacks to austerity is not universally backed within Labour, with one senior party figure with expertise in security matters saying that “if it weren’t for the election campaign,” police cuts would not be on the agenda. “We just don’t know enough about it," said the former Labour parliamentarian who asked to remain unnamed.

But at the union event Monday, Serwotka, the union chief, was clear that it would be a “dereliction of duty” for him and his colleagues not to speak out and Manuel Cortes, general secretary of the TSSA union, which represents British Transport Police staff, said the cuts had shown “a callous disregard for our safety.”

Such attacks on May’s record from the Labour Party and its backers are familiar. Whether or not they have more cut-through in the wake of recent tragedies will be clearer Friday morning when the vote tally comes in.