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‘Don’t gloat’. Cameron trotted along to the Commons today with this commandment ringing in his ears. He nearly managed it. But his manner betrayed his state of mind. There was an audible zing, an irrepressible sunniness in his voice as he inaugurated his second term. ‘This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others.’ Rarely has that formula held such a fizzy, cocaine kick. Labour’s acting leader, for now, is Harriet Harman. Is she about to pack it in? She seemed passionless and out of sorts. A scowl kept stealing across her lips as she delivered her joke-free lines. She was like a disgruntled lady mayoress opening a fete in a June downpour. Come on Hattie! That’s not the Labour way. Not at all.

David Cameron has to walk two tightropes on Europe, and at the same time too. The first is to negotiate a deal with other European leaders that satisfies the bulk of his Euro-sceptic party. If this was not difficult enough, simultaneously Cameron has to show voters that the European question isn’t consuming all of his government’s energies. For despite its importance, it still rankles relatively low on the public’s list of priorities. To address the latter point, I’m told that Cameron will make a major domestic policy announcement in the week of every EU summit in an effort to show that he is not taking his eyes off the home front.

Of all the talks he will have with European leaders about his plans to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with Europe, David Cameron was always likely to enjoy his meeting with Angela Merkel the most. And she doesn’t seem to have disappointed him, saying treaty change was not ‘impossible’ and that ‘we would like to be a part of the process that is going on in Great Britain at the moment and we would like to be a constructive partner in this process’. This is very encouraging for Cameron, though the feeling in Europe generally is still that treaty change is too hard or inconvenient.

It seems every week now there is a story about France and/or Germany ruling out EU treaty change and thereby putting pay to David Cameron’s EU reform push before it has even really begun. While this makes for good headlines, the reality is much more nuanced. Take today’s example: A leaked preliminary draft of a Franco-German paper on Eurozone reform reported by Le Monde and picked up by the Guardian, stated that in the short term (the next few years) the countries will focus on working within the EU treaties, which has been seen as a blow to Cameron’s reform push. There are some important points to keep in mind though. Firstly, this is not actually a shift in the Franco-German position.

The three main Labour leadership candidates have now all said that they want a referendum on Britain’s relationship with the EU. But the party’s ‘official’ position - that is, the policy it went into the last election with that everyone seems quite keen to disown - is that there should not be a referendum. The party will not have chosen its leader by the time of next week’s Queen’s Speech, even if MPs seem to be making their minds up pretty quickly, and so when the EU referendum bill is published in that speech, the party will need to respond. It would perhaps make sense if that response wasn’t a repeat of the old Miliband policy, given all the candidates likely to succeed him want a referendum.

In today’s Guardian, Matthew D’Ancona warns that David Cameron may face a successful rebellion from the 'Runnymede Tories' if he tries to repeal the Human Rights Act, led by David Davis. Not only would that be a major blow to his authority, it would make remaining in the EU a less attractive option in the forthcoming referendum. Human Rights experts insist that the two issues are wholly separate, although that’s open to debate. But there’s no doubt they’re politically linked.

Up until Thursday night, everything that David Cameron and George Osborne had done in government had had to be agreed by the Liberal Democrats. Every policy had to go through the ‘Quad’, the coalition government’s decision making body made up of Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Alexander. That doesn’t have to happen anymore. As one Downing Street figure says: ‘It is all completely different now, we can power forward with what we want to do. There’s no need for everything to be watered down. It’s invigorating’. Not having to manage a coalition, also frees up huge amounts of time for both Cameron and the Number 10 operation. It would be well advised to spend a good chunk of this time, say half, on managing the party.