David Cameron lays out his plans on European tour

David Cameron has begun a whirlwind tour of Europe to discuss his terms for renegotiating the UK's membership of the EU with key leaders.

There aren't going to be any results from this tour, which began in the Netherlands today and goes on to France this evening and Poland and Germany tomorrow, this is a laying out of positions.

There has been a lot of fencing around this issue for the last year or so while Europe waited to see whether Mr Cameron won the election and therefore whether there was going to be a renegotiation and a referendum.

Now there is, people want to know precisely what Mr Cameron wants and he wants to know what their reaction is going to be to his proposals.

This morning he was talking to the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who is very much a northern European ally.

Mr Cameron will have much tougher conversations than that, but already his Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond is warning not to listen too much to what is going to be a lot of posturing.