Despite being told by their leaders and the Speaker not to resist reform, some MPs see this process as a last chance to smooth off the sharpest edges of the Kelly reforms, if not to see them off altogether.

Even if all today's proposals are implemented in full, transition arrangements will mean there will be two classes of MPs in the next Parliament - those still able to employ family members and claim mortgages for the next five years and newly elected MPs for whom that will be illegal.

And in the meantime, those whose behaviour has caused most public anger are still in their jobs, still being paid and still eligible for pay-offs worth tens of thousands of pounds.

All Sir Christopher Kelly could do about them today was to urge the Commons to use its existing rules to deny the worst offenders their pay-offs. That looks unlikely to happen.

So, we may be nearing the final chapter of the expenses saga but the last line has not been written yet - far from it.

Kelly rejects the cry of many Labour MPs that MPs should be barred from having other jobs. He also says that the new independent regulator should set MPs' pay and pensions. For those fearing that politics may become a rich man's game, this will be some comfort. To those who fear snouts in the trough, it will be a source of real concern.

David Cameron says he'll tell us what his new position on Europe is later this week. It is the most important new policy announcement he may make before the next election. Simultaneously, he has to assuage the anger of those who will accuse him of betrayal by denying the people a referendum on Lisbon while spelling out how he can get some powers back from Brussels without provoking a major confrontation with the EU in the first few days of a Cameron government.

As I wrote last week, he will insist that his "cast-iron guarantee" of a referendum lasted only as long as the Lisbon Treaty was not law. He will reject the arguments of those saying he needs a referendum to give him the people's mandate to negotiate a new settlement with Europe by arguing that an election victory is mandate enough. He will promise a referendum for any future treaty change.

The referendum may be his political problem but his real problem is developing a negotiating strategy which does not descend into the farce of John Major's beef war; does not pretend that a repeat of Margaret Thatcher's handbagging at Fontainebleau is possible when it comes to a much more complex set of negotiations but does not persuade Eurosceptics inside the Tory party and beyond it that Cameron and Hague have "sold out", and put their desire for power before their principles.

Watch this space.

The Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs is not a purely scientific committee - it includes representatives of drugs charities, the police, social, health and education services as well as scientists. Its advice, therefore, may have science as its foundation but also takes into consideration other factors. Its critics claim that it is in the grip of a sort of "group think" which plays down the risks of drug taking.

Supporters of the philosophy of "harm reduction" argue that it is based on evidence that locking up drugs offenders and scaring young people about the impact of drugs simply has not and will not work. Opponents claim that this is an excuse for "going soft" on drugs and, in the longer term, creating the conditions for legalisation. They claim that the committee at first ignored and later downplayed the evidence about the link between cannabis and psychosis.

Johnson's anger with Professor Nutt stemmed from the repetition of his colourful assertion that more people die from horse riding than ecstasy in Britain - a claim he'd previously apologised for (saying he had "no intention of trivialising the dangers of ecstasy"). Johnson felt that Nutt was trying to undermine or re-write drugs policy which was rightly set by politicians. He feared that Nutt's words could and would be used to suggest that there was no need to worry about ecstasy, cannabis and LSD.

The row about harm reduction is the context in which the political debate exists. Clearly, they also respond to pressure from their constituents and the press not to appear "soft" on drugs. That's why Alan Johnson has the support of many Tories - his shadow, Chris Grayling, the former shadow Home Secretary David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith who has campaigned long and hard to highlight how drug addiction contributes to poverty. However, the Lib Dems led by Dr Evan Harris are firmly on the opposite side of the argument.

I've no doubt that the former Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, is right when he argues that the real cause of this dispute was Gordon Brown's decision to promise to re-classify cannabis without consulting the committee and, it follows, while ignoring the evidence. Something, it should be noted, which David Cameron said he would have done too - only sooner.

So, Alan Johnson has stumbled into not one but two major rows. The first focuses on the freedom of unpaid scientific advisers to express their own views in their own ways about the science they study and to have their advice considered by ministers rather than dismissed before it's even been given. The second surrounds who forms drugs policy and on what basis it's drawn up.

David Miliband had passionately attacked the Tories' new European allies and, in particular, the leader of their new grouping in the European parliament, Michal Kaminski MEP - who Miliband described as "a man denounced by the chief rabbi of Poland for an anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi past" as a former member of the extremist Polish Revival Party (NOP) - and as an opponent to this day of a national apology for the massacre of Jews by Poles in 1941.

Miliband quoted Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich in the New Statesman:

"I do not comment on political decisions. However, it is clear that Mr Kaminski was a member of NOP, a group that is openly far right and neo-nazi. Anyone who would want to align himself with a person who was an active member of NOP and the Committee to Defend the Good Name of Jedwabne (which was established to deny historical facts of the massacre at Jedwabne) needs to understand with what and by whom he is being represented"

However, this morning the chief rabbi has made it clear on the Today programme that, though he will not forget or condone Mr Kaminski's past, he regards the MEP today as an opponent of anti-Semitism, a friend of Israel and a member of a mainstream political party.

This will fuel William Hague's demand for an apology from Mr Miliband.

It won't, I suspect, be forthcoming. The foreign secretary could argue that no-one disputes Mr Kaminski's past - something he feels particularly passionate about given his own family's Jewish roots.

What's more, David Miliband knows that this controversy has highlighted the Tories' European stance when all previous attempts to do so have failed. He also knows that his attacks have unnerved some in the Jewish community who were thinking of backing the Tories just as his attacks on the alleged homophobia of other Tory allies has been used to try to win back the gay vote for Labour.

However, for the first time in this controversy, the Tories feel they are on the front foot. They will argue that alleging extremism in the leader of a foreign political party even after the chief rabbi of that country has exonerated him is not fitting behaviour for a foreign secretary.

And with Tony Blair's presidential hopes fading, it may not help those who hope that Mr Miliband will switch from being Britain's foreign secretary to being what many will regard as Europe's - the new High Representative role which will come into being if and when the Lisbon Treaty becomes law.

PS: Labour MP Denis MacShane has indeed claimed that this morning's interview changes nothing and that the chief rabbi "does not clear Kaminski", adding: "until Mr Kaminski expresses full and unreserved regret over what he said and did in relation to the Jedwabne massacres I will continue to criticise the Tory alliance with him."

The chancellor of Germany and the president of France are infuriated by the behaviour of the man who their diplomats tell them looks set to be Britain's next prime minister.

Neither Angela Merkel nor Nicola Sarkozy have met David Cameron for more than a year. Both tried and failed to persuade him to change his European policy. It is, though, about to change thanks not to them, but to events.

The Tories promise of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty will die with their hopes that the Czechs might halt the progress of the treaty into law.

The new Conservative approach to Europe will not be to the liking of those Eurosceptics who believe that only a full-blooded battle with the EU will deliver change.

David Cameron spoke this week of a policy based on "realism not isolationism". His allies shudder at the memory of John Major's beef war with Europe. They remember it producing not victory, but messy face-saving compromises.

Their aim, one shadow cabinet minister tells me, is to avoid idle threats "to bring the whole temple crashing down". Instead, the Tories are working on a list of changes they want to see and a list of changes others want which they can block if a Cameron government doesn't get its way.

Those who are demanding a referendum to strengthen the government's hand or to ensure that they do not "sell out" to Europe look set to be disappointed too.

David Cameron's "cast-iron guarantee" to Sun readers of a Euro referendum expires, I'm told, once there is no further chance of stopping the Lisbon Treaty. In its place comes a different cast-iron guarantee of a new law to force any future government to put any future EU treaty to a popular vote.

Cameron's aides have noted with relief that both the Sun and the equally Eurosceptic Telegraph seem to have joined what they regard as the realists' camp.

Senior Tories know that if they are to have any chance of changing Britain's relationship with the EU, David will need to be able to sit down with Angela and Nicolas. They believe that success will come not through confrontation but patient, tough-minded negotiation.

What he wouldn't do was repeat William Hague's alleged warning that a future Conservative government would regard the selection of Tony Blair as president of the European Council as "a hostile act".

Mr Cameron also refuses to say yet what he will do if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified - although there were hints. He spoke of the need for "realism not isolationism" and argued that on every decision in Europe, he favoured "co-operation and co-ordination".

I read this to be not a referendum and not a repeat of John Major's campaign of non-co-operation.

That's what the leader of the BNP hoped for. It's what those who despaired about his invitation to appear on Question Time feared. That is not how it turned out.

Exposure can work both ways. For much of the programme, Nick Griffin did not speak to the British people. He talked instead about himself and struggled to explain his past views and actions.

He was not a Holocaust denier, he insisted - but could not say why he had compared those who believed that Hitler killed millions of Jews with those who believed that the Earth was flat.

On the other hand, he could and did say that the "indigenous people of Britain" - by which he insisted he did not mean whites - were themselves victims of genocide. Surprisingly few of them appear to have noticed.

The Ku Klux Klan was not all bad, he went on, but Islam mostly was. And so on and so on.

That is not to say that Nick Griffin did not take the opportunity to make a direct appeal to voters. He presented himself as the moderniser of the far right - the creator of "New BNP". The old BNP had, he conceded, been racist. He had talked of wanting to create an all-white Britain. But now he and his party merely wanted to shut the door to newcomers and were happy to let everyone else stay.

Will that convince many? Probably not, but it may give cover to those who are fed up that their views and concerns have been ignored. There may well be people who feel that Nick Griffins views are too eccentric or too dangerous to make him a candidate for high office but who, nevertheless, feel that voting for him is a means to give the rest of the political class a mighty big kick.

That, in the end, will be the key to whether the BNP continues to rise or begins to fall. Will voters now feel they know what the BNP really stands for and cannot stand for it? Or will they say that's largely irrelevant if your aim is to tell other politicians: "It's time you woke up to our concerns"?

The Tories would do well to remember that the CWU could line the walls of their HQ with the scalps of politicians who took them on, and lost. Only Heath beat them.

Mrs Thatcher flirted with privatising the Royal Mail before shunning the idea.

In 1992, John Major and Michael Heseltine - then the president of the board of trade - were forced to scrap their plans to privatise when a dozen or so Tory backbenchers rebelled, threatening to wipe out the government's Commons majority of only 14.

Hezza's New Labour successor Peter Mandelson backed away from his plans to privatise the post in 1998 after the CWU leader roused the Labour conference to oppose him.

Ten years later, Gordon Brown brought back Peter and his privatisation plans only to abandon them both in the face of massive backbench hostility.

Team Cameron have to go back almost four decades for the last politician to defeat the posties. Ted Heath withstood a seven-week strike, after which postal workers settled for less pay than they'd originally been offered as the union had run out of strike funds to make up for their lost wages.

Of course, if Gordon Brown wins this dispute, it might help Cameron privatise the Royal Mail if he becomes prime minister. It might, of course, make that victory less likely.

Many will be deeply uncomfortable with this. Others argue that it is the inevitable consequence of the BNP's electoral - albeit limited - success. What's more, one senior Tory argues, the BNP leader's linking of two distinguished former generals with Nazi war criminals shows the value of exposing the party's arguments.

Until recently, most mainstream politicians have gone out of their way to avoid even talking about the BNP in order to deny them the oxygen of publicity. Ever so quietly behind the scenes, all the mainstream parties co-operated to try to head off the threat from the BNP - sharing intelligence about them and working to ensure that they faced proper opposition wherever they stood.

Then a number of Labour politicians who saw the party's rise in their areas - Margaret Hodge in Barking and Jon Cruddas in Dagenham - abandoned that approach and tried to force their own party to address the anxieties of white working-class voters who they feared were defecting. Some used anti-BNP campaigns to rally Labour activists who were otherwise reluctant to campaign for their party.

Now Conservatives are reacting to fears that the BNP is successfully hijacking traditional symbols of patriotism - the flag, the Spitfire and the poppy. Hence the campaign organised by two well-connected Tory activists which shot to prominence yesterday when a group of senior military figures joined the fray.

This week may mark an important shift in the way in which the other parties handle the threat from the British National Party, though all will be watching with some trepidation the opinion polls that follow.

It is worth remembering that the party remains a very small force. As I wrote after the European elections, the BNP's two MEPs were elected on a smaller share of the vote. They have just a few dozen councillors. However, the big parties now sense that they are a force that can no longer be ignored.

Update, 16:10: Earlier I pointed out that Nick Griffin became a member of the European Parliament even though he won fewer votes than he did five years ago.

He got 132,194 votes whereas five years earlier the BNP in north-west England had polled 134,959 votes. Griffin won because of a collapse in the Labour vote from 576,388 in 2004 to 336,831 in 2009.

However, lest this has led some to wonder what all the fuss is about, I should point out that nationwide the BNP's vote share went up 1.3% to over 6% and its total number of votes went up more than 16% to a figure not far shy of a million (943,598 to be precise).

In the nine regions of Great Britain where the BNP did not win a seat, its total vote went up by more than a quarter - 26.5% to be precise.

(Thanks to the European Movement for pointing this out.)

Earlier Mr Griffin was reported on the BNP's website comparing Generals Sir Mike Jackson and Sir Richard Dannatt with Nazi war criminals hanged after the Nuremberg trials. The BNP's leader now says that this was "black humour".

This is what the BNP's website said:

"Those Tory generals who today attacked the British National Party should remember that at the Nuremburg Trials, the politicians and generals accused of waging illegal aggressive wars were all charged - and hanged - together.

"This was the reaction of Nick Griffin MEP to the announcement that Tory lackeys Sir Richard Dannett and Sir Mike Jackson had broken all military protocol with their statement attacking the BNP."

I suggested to Mr Griffin that the families of victims of World War II and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might not get the joke. He did not respond.

From January, Tory HQ will take control of the short-listing of candidates as they operate under what they call "by-election rules". The Conservative leader told this morning's Speaker's Conference that he still did not have enough women candidates. He predicted that if he got a majority of one at the election he expected that there would be nearly 60 women MPs. This would still lead to a cut of the number of women in Parliament. So I've been told that all-women shortlists will be introduced in one or two constituencies or a handful at most.

He called this "positive action" not "positive discrimination". Not all in his party will agree.

It is a sign of the times that on an issue on which his party clearly lags he was given an easier time than Gordon Brown who was confronted by two of his own MPs - Diane Abbott and Parmjit Dhanda - for not doing enough.

This was not for the first of the much talked about - and yet still elusive - TV debates. It was for a joint appearance at a Speaker's Conference. At least according to Commons officials, the three were supposed to appear together at the same time on the same platform. The BBC News website reported as much.

However, they will now follow one after the other. It's a decision which the Tories are pinning on "Bottler Brown". It is one which frankly matters little other than to demonstrate where we might end up if the parties don't reach a firm agreement on prime ministerial debates sooner rather than later.

Mr Wilshire insists that he's done nothing wrong and will fight to clear his name... and so on and so forth.

However, he becomes the latest victim of the expenses saga and the latest scalp claimed by the Daily Telegraph. His going also presents another in a long line of opportunities for those hungry to enter the Commons (yes, really, there are some).

Team Cameron called the cameras in this afternoon to respond to questions about the future of David Wilshire - the MP who referred himself to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner after the Daily Telegraph's revelations about the office expenses he diverted towards a curious company run by himself and his partner.

The Tory leader was to deliver a holding statement. It never came. A short time ago the cameras were asked to leave again.

Now sources say that Mr Wilshire is being invited to give careful consideration to standing down at the next general election.

Apparently, he is, as yet, unpersuaded.