Thursday 18 February
Arriving at St Pancras for the Eurostar early on Thursday morning, I found myself amongst a small gaggle of lobby journalists, all clutching tickets to the same destination – Brussels, presumably with ‘open returns’ with no one being sure how long the negotiations would take.
We were, of course, heading to Brussels ahead of the summit at which David Cameron would try and thrash out the last minute ‘grand deal’ that would allow him to campaign for Britain to stay in Europe.
The substance of the deal has been held up as the greatest political settlement of our time by his more loyal supporters and dismissed as entirely irrelevant by the usual Eurosceptic suspects in the Conservative party.
Neither styling is fair. The renegotiation is not a game changer, but it shows that our European partners are open to working together to achieve reform in Europe.
I was heading to Brussels to talk to the liberal leaders and Prime Ministers from across Europe at the ALDE Pre-Summit meeting.