Critics of the hard-line approach, including prominent figures in the opposition Labour Party, and perhaps more important, among the Liberal Democrats who are the Conservatives’ partners in the coalition government, have said that much of what the prime minister and his associates are proposing is impractical, given the Conservatives’ lack of a parliamentary majority and what they see as a British affinity for moderation.

“Removing people for unacceptable behavior from social housing does not solve the problem,” Kevin Barron, a Labour legislator, said, since it would require local authorities to find alternative housing for evicted families.

But several Conservative-led local councils, in London, Nottingham and Salford, an outlying district of Manchester, have already said that they would start eviction proceedings against tenants convicted of rioting. And one, in Wandsworth, said it had started the process of evicting a woman whose teenage son was convicted in the rioting. A petition on a government Web site for a proposal to authorize public housing evictions drew more than 100,000 signatures within 48 hours. That number guaranteed that Parliament would have to debate the proposal.

The government has said it will maintain emergency policing levels in London through the weekend, and beyond if necessary. Some 16,000 police officers have been deployed in the capital, including reinforcements from police forces across the country. Similar precautions remained in place in cities like Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool that were hit by marauding groups, about half of them teenagers, who looted, destroyed and set fire to thousands of homes, businesses and other properties.

There have been other signs that the country has moved beyond the shock of the upheaval to a new phase of reflection — and for some, recrimination — on the causes, the days it took to get the turmoil under control, and ways to guard against a recurrence.

One element was the cross-fire that broke out between the Cameron government and two of the country’s top police officers. On Friday, they fell out noisily over who should take credit for sending thousands of police reinforcements into the riot areas of London and restoring order, and who should take the blame for the days of largely passive policing until then, which allowed the rioting to mushroom from a local disturbance in north London to a crisis across a wide area of England. Many of the riots’ victims have complained about police officers in riot gear standing back, taking no action, while mobs pillaged their neighborhoods.

Mr. Cameron told Parliament on Thursday that police tactics had been inadequate when the rioting started in the north London area of Tottenham last Saturday. “There were simply far too few police deployed on to our streets, and the tactics they were using weren’t working,” he said.