The riots were quite significant and he handled that well. Even so, it gave rise to a load of ridiculous criticism about two tier policing, releasing prisoners early to make room for Twitter criminals and other such nonsense.
Whatever he does, whether good or bad, his political opponents will look for angles to criticise him and to distract from their own shortcomings. Beergate was the perfect example of that.
In this case he has left himself open to legitimate criticism related to the freebies and it’s a bit embarrassing watching his front bench losing their own credibility in defending him over it.