Street fires are lit in Piccadilly, Nelson’s Column sprayed with anarchist graffiti, bank windows smashed.

Outside the Ritz hotel, a young man – hood down, beer can in one hand – hurls himself boot-first at a door, cheered on by colleagues drunk on their own naughtiness. Later, when all is finally quiet, 214 people will have been arrested and 84 injured.

Another day, another overwhelmingly peaceful protest overshadowed by a violent – and, let’s be blunt, stupid – minority. Throwing bottles at the police is not a policy position. It is a mindless crime.

Such unfocused, childish rage does nothing to turn the mainstream majority against the government. Nor should it. Most of us learn very early in our lives that you don’t win an argument by stamping your foot.

What makes it worse is that, in other parts of the world, we have seen protesters take to the streets to fight for the very democratic rights we take for granted – the very rights that allow large-scale demonstrations in cities like London and Manchester to go ahead.

In other countries, protesters are risking life and liberty for the opportunity to press their case at the ballot box. The violent demonstrators who trashed London already have this option. Why don’t they pursue it? Because they know that no one would vote for them. They don’t represent anyone but themselves.

Peer through the settling dust of Saturday, though, and there are lessons to be learned – for protesters and politicians alike.

The cuts have made a lot of people angry, and at least some of this anger may be justified. The important questions, though, are difficult. How much should we be cutting? How quickly? And – most crucially of all – is the government cutting in a way that is appropriate, reasonable, and fair?

These are questions that don’t vex the extremists – they are complex, after all, and it’s much easier to simply shout ‘no to the cuts’ and lob a rock – but they are certainly vexing the Labour party. So, too, Liberal Democrats up and down the country, who will face a day of reckoning with the public much sooner than Nick Clegg and his fellow MPs.

Where do we stand? Even before the global economic crisis struck, Britain was heading for a near-record budget deficit. Labour had been overspending for years – but Gordon Brown largely ignored those ministers who counselled caution. In 2008, the deficit stood at £68bn. The following year, the deficit was £152bn. The collapse of the banks massively magnified the problem; but a problem existed before the collapse.

Put simply: cuts were necessary before. Now the world has changed; they are more necessary, and must go deeper.

Labour still opposes both the speed and scale of the cuts, as we know. But this is a difficult argument to win. The general voter is not an economist; the general voter knows only that our economy is in a mess. At best, this form of opposition is a marker for the future. If rapid cuts cause the economy to nose-dive – and remember, we haven’t felt their full impact yet – Labour will rightly crow that they told us so. If they don’t, George Osborne will deserve the plaudits.

In the meantime, the danger for Labour is that they look unreformed, unrepentant and unrealistic. Ed Miliband’s speech to the TUC march was high on idealism – even quoting Martin Luther King – but low on hard-headed facts and figures. It was a speech to rally a crowd, not to win an election.

If Labour wants to create an argument – and a narrative – they would be better off looking at the specifics. Most people don’t have a view of macro-economics. They notice, however, when their library closes, or their class-sizes get bigger, or their doctor stops offering certain treatments. They might not be able to answer whether such cuts are necessary, but they will notice immediately if they don’t seem fair.

The local government cuts remain the clearest example. Any way you slice the pie, the coalition took a higher proportion of government grant away from the councils that could least afford it – and which happen to be in Labour heartlands in the urban north.

You can argue about whether this was deliberate. You can argue about whether it is reasonable to expect local people to fill the gap with council tax, as the government does. What is beyond dispute is that this is a clear case of ministers taking the most away from those that can afford it least. Opposing that isn’t idealistic, or soft-headed, or vague.

It is also, potentially, hugely damaging to a government which constantly tells us we are ‘all in this together’. When local government minister Eric Pickles rounded on the people of Manchester last week – telling us to ‘get over it’, without addressing the central unfairness – he immediately cast himself as the foot-stamper.

Mr Miliband – mindful of the dangers of splitting the country on north-south lines, and mindful that no one loves councils – has been reluctant to put such issues at the heart of his opposition. At the very least, this weekend’s mayhem should give him pause for thought.

Opposing everything is like smashing windows: a pointless, worthless, gesture of rage. Oppose wisely, and your words will carry weight. It is a lesson for the protesters; but it is a lesson for Labour, too.

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