Isabel Hardman

Aside from his ding-dong over floods with Ed Miliband at PMQs today, David Cameron also faced questions from backbenchers who have been affected by the floods. Conservative Graham Stuart asked whether the Prime Minister shared his 'outrage at the false choice presented by the Chairman of the Environment Agency between protecting urban and rural areas from flood'. He was referring to Smith's op-ed for the Telegraph earlier this week in which the quango chief pitched town and country against one another. The Prime Minister replied: 'I think my honourable friend is absolutely right: there shouldn't be a false choice between protecting the town or protecting the people who live in the countryside.

'I know a few people who could arrange just that,' remarked a Tory MP this morning on reading Danny Alexander's remarks in the Mirror that the Conservatives would reduce the top rate of tax to 40p 'over my dead body'. He told the newspaper: 'The top rate of tax has been an issue of late. Labour wants to take it back up to 50p, I think the 45p rate is the right place to be. I wouldn’t go to cutting below 45p – that would happen over my dead body. It’s better to say we are going to stick where we are.' It's worth pointing out that Alexander only means over his dead body in this Parliament. A source close to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury tells me: 'What he's saying is over my dead body in this Parliament. He's very explicit in the language he uses.

The row over the Immigration Bill is by no means over. It will go to the Lords next, where peers will doubtless have a few things to say about certain aspects of it. Theresa May is still in a hurry to get it through Parliament, so there will likely be some interesting tricks from the government side to try to speed things up. But Conservative MPs are also very concerned about something they backed last night which gained far less attention. The Home Secretary rushed out an amendment on Wednesday night which would render 'stateless' foreign-born terror suspects. The details are actually rather alarming: someone who had already naturalised in this country would have their passport taken away from them.

After the week he's had in the Commons, no-one would blame David Cameron for heading for the pub today. Unfortunately, he's got François Hollande in tow as he pitches up at a pub in his constituency, and the pair are supposed to be discussing European reform over the pork scratchings. This isn't great timing, frankly. The rebellious mood of the Tory party is in part down to a desire from backbenchers for more details of Cameron's European renegotiation plan - and signs that he's going to get what he wants too. A summit with another norther European country might yield more positive noises on this, as Cameron does have allies on the notion of European reform (although not the sort of reform to Britain's relationship with the EU that his backbenchers want).

In another twist of this Raab rebellion, Labour have just announced that they're voting against the amendment on deportation of foreign prisoners. There had been a moment where they would abstain, but now the party has decided that as the government itself as said it is illegal and would be counterproductive, it cannot do anything other than vote it down. The party says it will come forward with proposals in the progress of the bill to facilitate and not hinder the removal of foreign prisoners. A Labour source tells me: 'Weak and chaotic from the Prime Minister and Home Secretary on this so-called flagship bill.' But this is interesting, because former Home Secretary David Blunkett was a co-signatory of the motion (he has since removed it because he is out of London today).

So now that the Speaker has called Dominic Raab's amendment on deportation, the government whips have a frenzied few hours ahead of them as they try to peel off rebels. But this amendment has 106 signatures (two have joined since yesterday) and the rebels are expecting more to back it too. Labour told Coffee House yesterday that it will not support something that is illegal - but that still leaves room for the party to abstain rather than vote against. So we now have a situation where the amendment that caused all the fuss over the past few months - the Mills amendment on transitional controls for Bulgarian and Romanian migrants - is diminishing in support, while the Raab amendment, which snuck in at the last minute, is growing in power and causing all the fuss at the last minute.