Diary - New-look Euro Parliament

he newly-elected European Parliament is holding its first session this week, with MEPs vying for political influence. Half are novices in the Strasbourg assembly, the rest have been re-elected.

The BBC's Dominic Hughes is keeping a diary as he rubs shoulders with MEPs, gauging the mood as they settle in and forge new alliances. You can send in your comments using the form at the bottom.

The Conservatives in the European Parliament look like they're in a bit of a mess.

Late last night Edward McMillan-Scott, one of the Tories' longest-serving MEPs and a former group leader, was elected as one of the Parliament's 14 vice-presidents. So far so good. But the problem is he did so in direct contravention of his party and his group, the newly-formed European Conservatives and Reformists. The group was put together after David Cameron's pledge to pull the Conservatives out of the main centre-right group, the European People's Party, seen as too federalist by many Tories.

In order to get the group off the ground a delicately balanced deal was forged. The Polish delegation in the group, the Law and Justice Party, was promised one of the Vice Presidencies - Michal Kaminski, the delegation leader, was all set to get the post.

But then in stepped Mr McMillan-Scott, who was a vice-president in the last Parliament and clearly fancied another five years in the job. Perhaps it's no coincidence he was also one of the Conservatives most opposed to leaving the EPP in the first place. He was spotted by one of my colleagues at an EPP meeting last week. "Just catching up with old friends," he said at the time.

But in defeating Mr Kaminski, he has set the cat among the pigeons. The Poles are reported to have been furious they have lost out on the vice-presidency. I understand they didn't actually threaten to walk out, but to placate them the Tories' leader Timothy Kirkhope offered to stand aside as leader of the broader ECR group.

So now Mr Kaminski is group leader and so gets valuable guaranteed speaking time in debates; Mr McMillan-Scott is a vice-president of the Parliament but has had the Conservative whip withdrawn and could well be booted out of the ECR group. And Mr Kirkhope, who worked hard to establish the group in the first place, is left with very little. It's also possible that as a result the Tories may miss out on powerful committee chairmanships.

Why this matters is that when leaving the EPP and setting up the ECR group in the first place, the Conservative leadership said they would have a louder voice in the Parliament. Now that claim looks to be in tatters.

Press conferences follow, so more later. But we can expect Mr Kaminski to face some tough questions - what are his views on gay rights and homosexuality, for example? And the Conservatives must be wondering how this all went quite so pear-shaped.

Some late breaking drama here in Strasbourg, around the elections for the posts of Vice President to the European Parliament. It seems that the long-serving British Conservative MEP Edward McMillan-Scott - a former leader of the Conservatives in the Parliament - has defied his party and stood for the post of vice president. He was one of the VPs in the last Parliament and obviously fancied carrying on with the job. But the deal within the Conservatives' new group - the European Conservatives and Reformists - was that a Polish MEP would get the gig instead.

(Groups are less formal than parties and more like loose coalitions among Europe's political "families" - but they matter because forming one gets you access to parliamentary money and speaking time as well as powerful committee places. Parliamentary rules mean that you must have 25 members from seven countries for a group to be recognised.)

Mr McMillan-Scott - never really very happy with the Conservatives pulling out of the biggest centre-right group, the European People's Party - was told he would lose the party whip if he stood in opposition to his new Polish colleague - but stand he did. That has left the Conservatives' Polish allies fuming.

How fragile is the Tories' new group? It's the centrepiece of David Cameron's European policy. If the group collapses it would be a disaster for the Tories. Watch this space - I'll try and update you later tonight or tomorrow, depending on when we get a result.

Just had a chat with two Labour MEPs. I asked them about how they were going to deal with the BNP question - engage or isolate? One of them described the policy as "developing". In the 1970s there was a "No Platform" approach - in other words, deny racists access to a public platform from which they can speak. But Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons are democratically elected representatives, so that's not going to work now. Nick Griffin is even on the BBC's Sunday morning Andrew Marr Show. Hence the "developing" nature of the approach. Quite what it's developing into is not yet clear.

On the gossip I passed on earlier: Apparently Belgian law allows staff in cafes and bars to refuse to serve customers who are upsetting others or causing a disturbance, and this is what's been happening in some cases when the BNP arrive. But my two MEPs thought it most unlikely that microphones would have been switched off when they tried to speak in parliamentary meetings. "Cock up rather than conspiracy" was one view.

What is clear is that the BNP are not welcome at a drinks reception tomorrow hosted by the British Minister for Europe (and former MEP) Baroness Glenys Kinnock. All the other British MEPs have been invited, along with members of the British press here in Strasbourg. But the BNP? No.

By the way, the new President Jerzy Buzek is still taking congratulatory phone calls. I just spotted him outside the hemicycle, mobile clamped to his ear. Then a quick handshake with a passing MEP and another call comes in.