Isabel Hardman

Tories preparing the ground for David Cameron's renegotiation of Britain's relationship with Europe are to take MPs from other parties with them as they visit European cities, Coffee House has learned. The Fresh Start Project, made up of Conservative MPs campaigning for reform of the European Union, has already visited Prague, Warsaw and Berlin to hold preliminary meetings setting out the need for change. Its next round of visits will include members of the All Party Parliamentary Group for European Reform, which is co-chaired by Fresh Start's Andrea Leadsom and Labour's Thomas Docherty. The Conservative MPs organising the visits think including other parties will help them secure more meetings and also advance the case for reform in other Westminster parties as well.

Credit where credit's due to the Tory spin machine for following up a good idea and putting pressure on Labour and the Lib Dems. This doesn't happen very often, so it's noteworthy. The party has launched a website called Let Britain Decide, which asks the public to back James Wharton's private member's bill for an EU referendum. It asks visitors to sign up to the campaign, lobby their MP, write to their local paper and brandish posters supporting the bill. A clever little paragraph on the site reads: 'Currently, only one of the main three political parties believes the British people deserve a say on Europe: the Conservatives. They are bringing forward a draft bill to legislate for an In-Out referendum before the end of 2017, following a renegotiation.

Perhaps the Bilderberg conference has had a lasting effect on Parliament, after all. Today we saw what can only be a conspiracy between the Labour left and Michael Gove's band of reforming right-wingers. As the Education Secretary unveiled his plans to reform GCSEs, he was accosted by Diane Abbott, rarely knowingly in agreement with much of what the Coalition is doing. But the Labour MP didn't want to tell Gove he was wrong. She wanted to say he was right. She asked Gove whether he agreed that 'an emphasis on rigorous qualifications and an emphasis on attaining core academic subjects is not, as is sometimes argued, contrary to the interests of working-class children, and black minority ethnic children?

While dealing with the teaching unions is a simple stand-off for Michael Gove, spare a thought for poor old Stephen Twigg, Labour's shadow education secretary, who has to work out how on earth to deal with the NUT and NASUWT habit of opposing everything. There is a palpable sense of frustration on the Labour frontbenches about the way the two largest unions in particular behave. Twigg has made clear that he does not support strike action planned over a general raft of discontent over many different issues, and he has opposed the work-to-rule industrial action promoted by these unions too. On performance-related pay, the unions behave as though Voldemort is coming soon to a school near you, while Labour is merely unconvinced that it's the great saviour of educational excellence.

Critics and fans of Michael Gove alike accept that sometimes the Education Secretary can be a little too pugnacious. He often encourages the pantomime boos that accompany him, and will throw himself into any fight with gusto. But then the representatives of the leading teaching unions pop up to criticise his reforms, and it becomes very clear how Gove ended up like this. Christine Blower's interview on the Today programme was one notable example. The NUT general secretary argued that grades hadn't necessarily been devalued, and that the reforms might devalue the achievements of those children who have already passed their exams. She said: 'We think this is slightly rushed and also it tends to demean the achievements of students who have got GCSEs in the past.