A bitter war of words has broken out between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn over who can be trusted to best protect the country following the wave of terror attacks across Britain.

The Labour leader echoed calls for the Prime Minister to resign over policing cuts but then suggested the best opportunity to see her leave No 10 would come on Thursday in the polling booths.

Faced with criticism that he would be soft on terrorism if he won power, Mr Corbyn denied he had been against a shoot-to-kill policy, saying his previous comments had been misconstrued, and that he believed the police, in gunning down three terrorists near London Bridge, had taken the right action to protect the public.

At an election campaign event in London, ostensibly about Brexit, Mrs May had to defend her record in office over policing and accused Mr Corbyn of failing to support measures to tackle terrorism.

The PM, a former Home Secretary, was placed on the defensive after Steve Hilton, a former No 10 adviser to David Cameron, said she was "responsible for security failures of London Bridge, Manchester, Westminster Bridge" and "should be resigning, not seeking re-election".

The accusation centres on a decision that has left the police south of the border with 20,000 fewer officers than in 2010.

When asked if he supported the call for the PM to resign, Mr Corbyn said: “Indeed I would because there's been calls made by a lot of very responsible people on this who are very worried that she was at the Home Office for all this time, presided over these cuts in police numbers and is now saying that we have a problem - yes, we do have a problem, we should never have cut the police numbers."

The Labour leader later told the BBC: "There's an election on Thursday; that's the chance and there's a call by people being made in the emergency services who say the cuts in police numbers during her time at the Home Office are appalling and that has to be challenged and it's been challenged."

His colleague, Jon Trickett, the Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, added: “We're going to sort this out on Thursday with the General Election."

But Mrs May hit back, saying, since 2015, police budgets in England had been protected "despite the fact that Jeremy Corbyn's front bench suggested that police budgets should be cut by up to 10 per cent".

She went on: "It is also about the powers you give to the police and I have been responsible for giving the police extra powers to deal with terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has boasted that he has opposed those powers and opposed the powers for anti-terror actions throughout his time in parliament.

"And I also support, absolutely, shoot-to-kill and what we saw on our streets on Saturday was how important that was," declared the Tory leader.

Conservative HQ has been swift to criticise Mr Corbyn for not supporting such a policy but the Labour leader denied this was true, pointing out that an internal BBC investigation of an interview in which he discussed the issue in 2015 had found the report to be inaccurate.

“As far as I am concerned the police act, as they did on Saturday, as they did in Manchester, in defence of innocent life; that is a reasonable and proportionate response as happened in Westminster," he said.

The Labour leader also hit back at Mrs May's claims that Labour was arguing for police cuts of 10 per cent in 2015, pointing out that the UK Government only protected budgets, which was in itself disputed, after Opposition and public pressure.

"We forced through a retreat on police numbers and it's wrong that she should use this opportunity to exploit the situation," said Mr Corbyn.

He also suggested that Mrs May had broken the election truce after the London Bridge attack by making a party political statement on the steps of No 10.

"I was surprised that only an hour after they announced they were suspending campaigning that a political speech was made on the steps of Downing Street. It was bad timing and we should have all respected the pause in campaigning; my party certainly did,” added the Labour leader.

Elsewhere, Sadiq Khan, the London Mayor, also hit out at cuts to the police budget in the metropolis, saying plans to change the funding formula could see a loss of £1.7 billion. “We don't receive the right level of funding as a capital city we should receive,” he declared.