Morning Report – May 13th

An eerily quiet day today, which on recent form probably means a major story is about to break. After a string of busy Friday’s, are we about to slip seamlessly into the weekend without a government bust up or a major gaffe? We’ll have to wait and see.

In the meantime there’s bad news for the government, as the IFS report that the average family will be £500 worse off this year. A decline in living standards is never a good thing for a government, and Ed Miliband will want to incorporate this in to his squeezed middle message. The Tories, meanwhile, will probably try to throw the Lib Dems under the bus as usual, but it’s hard to see how the economy is their fault. Apart from Danny Alexander, obviously.

The Telegraph are also hitting Cameron hard on “a scandal that David Cameron will struggle to shake off” – namely youth unemployment. Simon Heffer may have left, but the number of people at the “Torygraph” willing to step up and kick the PM seems undiminished.

Ed Miliband is immune to getting a kicking from his own side though. Former Blair speechwriter and Times columnist Philip Collins says that Labour’s performance last Thursday was “a disaster”(£) and that the party won’t win until we admit that we spent too much.

And is Britain moving towards a US-style of anti-abortion campaigning? And is Frank Field aiding Tory MP Nadine Dorries in her quest? That’s the accusation from campaign group Abortion Rights this morning.