Morning Report – March 31st

Keep an eye on Birmingham this morning, where Labour’s local election launch is taking place. The focus will be on the £182 that the party argues every family will lose because of local authority cuts. That number sounds quite small though, but added to other figures it becomes significant. Perhaps someone should do an accumulator. Interestingly though, Miliband has also exploded a long held myth today. Research shows that Labour councils actually charge council taxpayers less than Tory or Lib Dem councils on average. Miliband said:

“Labour will be your community’s first line of defence against the damage being done by a Conservative-led Government and their Liberal Democrat allies.”

“Labour’s record is clear: Labour councils cost you less, with council tax bills on average £207 lower than Tory authorities.”

The launch begins at at around 11am. We’ll bring you news on that as and when we get it.

Before that though, one of the more shameful episodes for the party in recent years will come to a close today as former MP Jim Devine is sentenced over his expenses claims. That should happen around 10am.

There has been much coverage of Cameron’s performance at PMQs yesterday. As we said yesterday, Cameron lost his cool in a really damaging way. The Mirror agrees as you might expect, but perhaps more morryingly for the PM, so does The Times(£). The man he lost his temper with, Ed Balls, has been interviewed by Mehdi Hasan in the New Statesman, which is well worth a read.

There are rumours that Cameron is planning to tone down NHS reforms after anger from doctors and the Lib Dems, which has led to Alastair Campbell writing a blog with a wonderfully evocative headline “Lansley needs to watch his back because Cameron is working behind it“. Ouch.

And finally, do you remember earlier on in the AV campaign there were accusations of Nazi smears? Well now we have that all over again, except this time, it’s between members of the shadow cabinet. All is not well at the heart of the coalition, it would seem…