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The government has messed up the communication of the latest phase of the Covid-19 response very badly. No one is clear what the new rules are, what the new slogan means, what we are or are

not supposed to be doing. As such, it is very easy to be the opposition. You just need to show how badly they are doing, and make it clear what Labour would do differently. However, at some

point there is going to be better news. Death rates will go down, restrictions will be lifted. Normality will return. For most of us, life will go on. How do you oppose when the news is

good? Even though the government has made a huge number of mistakes there will be a sense of optimism that will make holding them to account much harder. It won’t always feel like today’s

open goal. It is also worth remembering that, when thinking up an opposition strategy, Twitter isn’t real life. There are some very noisy voices on the left who believe that the only job of

the Labour Party and its leadership is to be rude to and about the government. They are getting increasingly shrill as Keir Starmer pursues his strategy of “constructive opposition”. But

Starmer’s approval numbers show this is working. There’s a famous Monty Python sketch which I am often reminded of by those people on Twitter who just think opposition is about calling Boris

Johnson evil. In it, two men disagree on what a real argument is. The debate is whether, like the Twitter bores, you think an argument is just contradiction, or whether as Starmer is

demonstrating it’s a series of logical statements there to refute the other point of view. Labour has a long way to go to dig itself out of the hole it found itself in during the Corbyn

years. The government is also enjoying an extended period of good will as the country gets behind it and as No10 deals with the crisis. This probably won’t last, especially as Johnson

continues to make such missteps and sow confusion. But when there is good news, Labour would be wrong simply to point at everything the government has got wrong. To prove to the country that

Labour should be leading rather than opposing, the Party needs to understand the nation and its mood. That will mean celebrating the wins while also holding the government to account. There

cannot be a free ride for government on the lack of PPE, the paucity of testing, the ongoing confusion, or the way this crisis has exposed once again just how awful our social care sector

is and the low pay of those on whom we rely on most. But a good opposition will have to balance asking these questions with reflecting the mood of a nation which, on the whole, currently

thinks the government are doing a decent job. That feeling may disperse. But that dispersal can’t be forced. Opposition is hard. Opposition during a crisis is even harder. It isn’t as simple

as contradicting every move the government makes. Starmer and his team need to offer the country an alternative vision, one that sets out what a Labour government would be like coming out

of this crisis and why that will matter for ordinary people. At the last election, Labour fundamentally failed to do this. Its plans were too fantastical and were not believed. But this

crisis has exposed how very broken so much of our society is, how unequal and how run down. If the government tries to return to “Tory as usual” after this very revealing crisis, the country

will not be pleased. It will be the job of the opposition at that point not simply to point at the Tories and say how awful they are. It will be their job to offer an attractive, radical

yet workable alternative. That is how you move from being an effective opposition to being the next government.