How­ev­er, Steve Vick­ers, CEO of risk con­sul­tant SVA and for­mer head of the police’s crim­i­nal intel­li­gence bureau, warned that if the force did not move in a much more deter­mined man­ner then mat­ters might even­tu­al­ly be tak­en out of its hands.

“What is now hap­pen­ing in Leg­co is mob rule – not legit­i­mate polit­i­cal expres­sion,” he said. ​“There will be dam­age to Hong Kong as a con­se­quence of these glob­al TV images.”

He said the vio­lent pro­test­ers had lost pub­lic sup­port as they ruined the progress made by the wider peace­ful movement.

“The fly­ing of the colo­nial flag inside Leg­co is stu­pid and igno­rant and delib­er­ate­ly cal­cu­lat­ed to inflame the cen­tral gov­ern­ment and its sup­port­ers and to pro­voke some form of inter­ven­tion for extra tough action on the ground,” he warned.