PRO-WITHDRAWAL: Plaid Cymru, Green Party, the BNP, Respect and UKIP (UKIP specify there must be US agreement first).

PRO-TROOPS STAYING BUT CALLING FOR A RE-THINK: SNP; Liberal Democrats, Conservatives.

There are “real tensions” in the Liberal Democrat parliamentary ranks about their position, an MP told me.

One Lib Dem MP told me he believed that Paddy Ashdown’s outspoken support for the action in Afghanistan was acting like a drag anchor on the party’s position when the logic should be taking the party towards a withdrawalist position.

The Conservatives believe that if they win the election Afghanistan will be one of the decisive issues on which they will be judged. A policy review could follow soon after an election.

As for the government, the real tensions on the Labour benches were glimpsed when former Foreign Office minister Kim Howells went public with a withdrawal call this week but the Prime Minister will tomorrow re-state his position that the troops must stay, the work is vital and protects British people on the streets here.

It’s that last argument that most agnostic/worried MPs you speak to have a problem accepting.

Related: Poll shows the public are losing confidence on Afghanistan

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The numbers thinking the Taliban can be defeated are down from 42 per cent to 33 per cent in the space of two weeks.

The poll suggests that the numbers thinking the Taliban cannot be defeated are up from 48 per cent to 57 per cent in the space of two weeks.

Number Ten says the Prime Minister’s acutely aware of the “public debate” and has changed his diary to give a speech tomorrow morning making the case for keeping troops in Afghanistan. The speech isn’t yet written but is not expected to signal a change in policy.

The deaths of British servicemen at the hands of an Afghan policeman were already known about when the polling was conducted yesterday.

That’s leading to a rethink on the ground about how security can be tightened.

Strategically, the Karzai problem is triggering a rethink of its own.

The central government President Karzai runs lacks credibility and reach but there’s no plan B yet developed to side-step him.

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It all sounds to me like a downgrading and diluting of existing policy on Europe with a bit of chaff thrown up for the Euro-sceptics (namely, a Sovereignty Act which, we are told, establishes the supremacy of UK law over EU law – m’learned friends say it’s probably a bit more difficult than that).

David Cameron says it is “realistic, reasonable and do-able.” It’ll still scare some in Whitehall who’ve watched with mounting horror the Tories’ European agenda, but they’ll sleep better tonight than before.

As for the referendum, David Cameron is now saying there will be no referendum on anything European in the next Parliament. He will be too busy with other priorities and a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty would be pointless.

You get the impression he watched overnight to see the range and calibre of voices raised in opposition to his dropping of the Lisbon referendum and felt he could slap them down strongly today – he calls a post-ratification referendum on Lisbon a “phoney,” money-wasting idea.

Some in Brussels and other European capitals will be sleeping better tonight as well. David Cameron still wants to repatriate some powers but says he is not looking for a “bust up.”

Today Tory policy changed emphasis.

The party has been through a great journey in opposition, from stopping European integration the emphasis moved to making a grab back from Brussels of already devolved powers.

The key phrase in David Cameron’s speech today was “never again.”

The party emphasis has not returned to stopping moves towards closer union not unpicking what has passed. There is still some of the latter in the mix – a push to repatriate powers that will take a very long time to get anywhere.

But the emphasis has changed. This is David Cameron signalling to Whitehall, Brussels, his party and voters that he is not a fanatic on Euro issues.

The Kelly Report also calls for a law (point 13.31) which stops governments from interfering in any recommended salary hikes that the independent pay review body may recommend.

There are a couple of areas that didn’t come up in the press conference Sir Christopher gave but which are quite striking.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life clearly thinks that the law setting up the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is a complete dog’s dinner – Chapter 13 describes it as “put through all its stages in parliament in great haste”, of which “it bears the scars”.

It has “confusion at its heart” and “runs unnecessary risks of being dysfunctional”.

They want IPSA to have the ability to demand information and repayment from MPs, just like the DWP or HMRC.

That, many MPs will feel, is a dilution of the power of MPs to police themselves.

Kelly goes further and wants outsiders to sit on the Standards and Privileges Committee alongside MPs (and sit on the Speakers’ committee).

“No issue of privilege arises,” they say.

Plenty of MPs will see that differently.

- Read more: Will MPs conspire to dilute the Kelly proposals?

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That was one of the surprises (there aren’t many after all the leaks!) in his report. Northern Ireland parties are very skilled at getting special favours from UK governments, so this may not come into law by 2011 – we shall see.

More broadly, on the changes to all MPs’ allowances and whether he was confident they would be implemented, Sir Christopher just told me at his press conference that “you never get a complete assurance” from party leaders on things like this.

Some MPs have raised the prospect of using the period of consultation that the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority has to hold under law as a moment to intervene and dilute these proposals.

Kelly warned them that would be “an error” and dangerous. Kelly reserved particular scorn for Harriet Harman, who used a weekend interview to associate herself with MPs who employ relations and don’t want to sack them (as the report suggests).

He said she’d been supportive of the idea of stopping relations being employed when she gave evidence to the committee.

In general, he seems extremely jaded about the party hierarchies who he blames for leaking what he feels was a garbled version of his report after he briefed them last week.

IPSA acting chief executive Andrew McDonald is, I hear, thinking now of a shorter consultation period than originally planned to enforce these plans – six weeks, not three months.

He is confident he can – even though the body is not fully staffed – get new rules in place for a date known in the jargon as “P+1″, the first day of a new parliament after a general election.

Like the new chairman selected yesterday, Sir Ian Kennedy, he expects to use his judgement not simply “input” the Kelly recommendations. But that doesn’t mean the IPSA is likely to do what some MPs are hoping for and seriously alter the Kelly plan.

- UPDATED: New post on the Kelly review

- Related: MPs forced to bare all for voters

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The Czech government gave assurances to EU partners at Brussels last week that there would be no more delay.

A Conservative announcement of a change in policy is now expected very soon too. The Daily Telegraph parked its tanks on David Cameron’s lawn this morning in a pre-emptive strike.

It does not like the fact that there will be no retrospective referendum on Europe. Mr Cameron thinks his new policy has enough Euro scepticism in it to avoid the threatened exodus to UKIP.

If he won the general election, he would launch an attempt in Europe to get powers repatriated to the UK – a mighty task given treaty-fatigue in the EU.

Perhaps more important though, in the great scheme of things, is the policy already announced in October 2007 but likely to be re-announced in the coming hours or days: the plan to make the UK, like Ireland and some other EU countries, a state that can only ratify an EU treaty after a referendum.

It’s hard to imagine how any treaty in the last 20 years would’ve got through a referendum in the UK. Could even a treaty that repatriated powers be sure of support in a referendum?

Irish referenda show how these popular votes can become hijacked by all sorts of unexpected or unrelated issues.

The move in Tory policy to a “compulsory referendum before ratification” country was unveiled at the 2007 Conference by William Hague but many eyes were elsewhere on the day – on the possible early election that hadn’t been ruled out.

A lot of the newspapers made it an inside page story…it doesn’t feel like an inside page story now.

As for the post-Lisbon process, EU governments expect a special one-off EU summit to be held in Brussels on Thursday 12th November, at which the member states will carve up the jobs of President, Lord High Executioner for Foreign Affairs and the EU Commission.

Tony Blair is expected to talk to Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy this week to see if there’s life in his candidacy for the presidency.

If it fails, few around Westminster believe that David Miliband can really have dismissed the High Rep job out of hand. He may yet have a long night with close friends talking it through.

The former Irish prime minister John Bruton, currently Irish ambassador to Washington, has just written a letter to the EU ambassadors in Washington asking them to tell their governments that he’s the man for the job.

Not promising when you have to write your own letters maybe. Much better as a launch to get another PM calling for you to get the top job.

Gordon Brown, side by side with David Miliband, did just that this afternoon, a joint launch of the Blair candidacy at a press conference in Brussels.

Gordon Brown said he talks to the man he repeatedly tried to get out of No.10 “most weeks”. It was a relationship that few close to the two men could ever fathom and today marked another fascinating chapter.

It may be a brief chapter. There were plenty of sceptical voices heard around Brussels today.

But Gordon Brown is giving it some welly. He told socialist prime ministers at a meeting: “Get real – this is a unique opportunity to get a strong progressive politician to be president.”

Wonder how that went down?

But there is a bit of retrospection in the Lords plans that could make life uncomfortable for peers who think they are out of the woods on their expenses.

In Annex 1, point 3 on p50 of the report the new Commons-style independent commissioner gets the power to investigate claims of wrongdoing going back four years.

Given that the commissioner is expected to be in post from 1 April 2010 it means that even if a peer has tidied up his or her act in the last few months they could still be investigated by the new commissioner for alleged misdeeds committed between 1 April 2006 and 1 April 2010. 

It’s not Legg but depending on the commissioner and what cases are referred to him it could be significant. 

Meanwhile the clerk of the parliaments looks at cases (though he has had to suspend some cases while the police look at them).

- Related: MPs faced to bare all for voters

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Sir Christopher Kelly isn’t satisfied with the transparency plans already laid down and suggests going further.

He wants potential MPs to make a declaration to their constituents before an election saying just how much they intend to work on the side.

It would not be operable for this coming general election but would be for future ones. On another proposal, there’s some confusion in Westminster about how Sir Christopher Kelly came to talk of only “12 constituencies” being affected by his proposed change to the second home allowance zone when he talked to party leaders yesterday.

Sir Christopher estimates that if you apply the one hour rule (he calculates that as a journey time of one hour from the gates of the Commons to a station in your constituency – including time taken to get to main London terminus, not including the journey from your constituency station to your actual constituency home) then only an additional 12 MPs lose their allowance on top of the many who lost out when the “20 mile radius” from Westminster rule was introduced earlier this year.

That doesn’t seem like much of a saving, stripping 12 MPs of the allowance, given that one of the tasks for the committee was meant to be cutting the overall costs of MPs’ expenses.

Quite a few MPs started the day talking about all sorts of wheezes and schemes that might allow them to frustrate or significantly amend the Kelly recommendations, forgetting that in the frenzied aftermath of the Telegraph expenses stories they had stripped themselves of the power to determine their own expenses.

One MP reminded me of one celebrated case where an MP tried to make sure he would get his hands on the sliding scale “golden goodbyes” which Sir Christopher is now consigning to the dustbin.

Back in the 1970’s the veteran Labour MP and anti-monarchist Willie Hamilton worked out that by voluntarily standing down and not contesting his Scottish seat he would miss out on the severance payout. He looked up one of the safest Tory seats in the UK, South Hams in Devon, and stood against the Tory MP there to make sure he had contested an election, gone down fighting, and could still get the extra payout that entitled him to.

No doubt Sir Christopher has made sure there are no such loopholes in his report.

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The government doesn’t want to get the wrong side of him on its cuts in the Territorial Army training. Yesterday in the Commons the old bruiser signalled his unhappiness with uncharacteristic delicacy (column 26).

But the government got the message. The clock is ticking towards a three-line whipped vote tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7pm on a Conservative motion attacking the TA training cuts. 

John Reid would be the best-known name amongst a number of Labour former ministers and defence experts currently thinking of abstaining.

The government is chatting to Dr Reid – one person close to the conversations tells me they expect that “there will be movement” beyond the £2.5m shaving off the cuts announced yesterday.

General Richards, the head of the army, is said to be digging in his heels a bit on a plan which he originated – he believes recruitment has improved in the regular army (as it often does in a recession) and he can staff more frontline positions now than in the past when the TA was called on to contribute more (with the exception of certain skilled areas like the medicine).

John Reid is the main but not only focus of the government lobbying.

It was an Opposition Day vote that sank the government on the Gurkhas’ right to settle in the UK and though the rebel numbers don’t look as threatening on this vote there are quite a few Labour marginals with TA bases and one former minister pointed out that TA folk are exactly the kind of active citizens who know how to make their concerns heard.

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- Related: Spending promises from Brown