Isabel Hardman

How does a Prime Minister get a recalcitrant minister to agree to something? Well, if it's not going to make any difference to whether some legislation passes and the minister isn't directly responsible for the policy, then he can always let them avoid a vote, as he seems to be doing on HS2 today. But what if the minister is the one who needs to sign off on a policy change? I hear that David Cameron found himself in this situation late last year when trying to make some changes to the government's counter-extremism strategy. Baroness Warsi (not his favourite minister) was refusing to accept the changes, which the Prime Minister ambushed her over.

Where will the ministers whose constituencies will be affected by HS2 be when the legislation reaches its key votes in the Commons? As I said on Friday, the chances are that some of them might suddenly find they need to travel overseas quite urgently when MPs vote at second reading on Monday, and again at report stage and third reading later on. The ministers in question are as follows: David Lidington – Con – Aylesbury and Buckinghamshire. Minister of State for Europe. Dominic Grieve – Con – Beaconsfield. Attorney General. Jeremy Wright – Con – Kenilworth and Southam. Minister for Prisons and Rehabilitation. Nick Hurd – Con – Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner. Minister for Civil Society. Andrea Leadsom – Con – South Northamptonshire.

The High-Speed Rail Bill pops up in the Commons on Monday - with two attempts to kill it off planned. Michael Fabricant and Cheryl Gillan - whose constituencies would both be affected by the proposed route - have both drawn up motions which call for the House of Commons to decline to give the Bill a second reading. Fabricant was sacked from his position as Vice Chair of the Conservative party for pushing ahead with his motion (and a number of other things, too) and has the support of Sir Edward Leigh, Jeremy Lefroy, David Davis, David Nuttall, William Cash, Caroline Spelman, Bob Blackman, Chris Kelly and Andrew Turner.

David Cameron's decision to hug-a-Christian seems to have worked pretty well, judging by the political response he's provoked. For starters, his comments about Britain being 'evangelical' about its status as a Christian country managed to enrage the sort of people who also might annoy the churchgoing conservatives he needs to win back after the row over gay marriage. Today, he - and the secularists - got a response from the Archbishop of Canterbury who wrote on his blog: 'It's all quite baffling and at the same time quite encouraging. Christian faith is much more vulnerable to comfortable indifference than to hatred and opposition. It's also a variation on the normal "Sword and Grail discovered" stuff that seems to be a feature of Easter week news.

Who will go where in the forthcoming reshuffle? Guido suggests that Michael Gove could be in for a move to party chairman, given all his major reforms have either been implemented or blocked by the Lib Dems. Number 10 has certainly told Gove that he will be playing an increasing role in the general election campaign: I understand this was made clear to him in the winter of last year, which would explain why David Cameron was quite so cross about the Education Secretary's comments to the FT about Etonians. Cameron recognises that Gove is a smooth media performer who doesn't wilt under the heat of the studio lights, or under the heat of a grilling from top interviewers.

David Cameron and George Osborne managed to garner more attention for their infrastructure announcement (or re-announcement) today by organising their first joint appearance alone together in four years - and making sure the media were aware that this was the case. The pair haven't appeared together in public for a while partly because they fear doing so would suggest to voters that the government was run by two chaps from very similar backgrounds; better to dilute it by pitching up with other ministers, hopefully with vaguely different backstories. But it is also quite impressive that the two men haven't felt the need to do these joint appearances after questions about splits between them. That's because those questions rarely arise, and when they do, they're rarely valid.

It's quite easy to grow quite used to the way things are, and only realise that they're a bit odd when there's a momentary shift. Today Parliament is packed with women, which is a bit of a shock to the system. They're in New Palace Yard to film scenes from 'Suffragette', rather than as part of a new influx of female MPs or journalists. I have to admit that I often don't notice how masculine this place is: you just get used to it and by and large Parliament is a very pleasant place to work indeed. It was only when a visiting female journalist remarked after the post-PMQs huddle this week that the discussion had been dominated by blokes asking about the gender balance of the new Cabinet that I realised how few women journalists had been present - and how many men.

David Cameron launched his party's European and local elections campaign in Manchester today. After weeks of polarised debate between Nick and Nigel, the PM had a task in suggesting that there could be some nuance between In and Out which involves a bit of shake-it-all-about. He repeated his line that both the Lib Dems and Ukip took an 'extremist' stance on the EU, saying: 'Looking at the other parties, there are effectively two extremist camps. One says: “we love the European Union.” The other says: “we hate the European Union.” One says: “we want things to stay the same.” The other says: “let’s just walk away from the EU.

It's difficult to know what astonished people more about Michael Fabricant's sacking: that he has lost his job or that he was still in a role that required some semblance of collective responsibility. Shortly after assuming the role of Vice Chair of the Conservative Party, he called for a pact with Ukip. Some of his tweets have raised eyebrows. He said it was 'about time' that Maria Miller resigned.