It's only days since Labour looked in difficulty over Europe and tax harmonisation, and Conservatives were rubbing their hands at the opportunities to exploit government difficulties.

All of that has been swept out of the headlines by the Conservatives' own crisis over the sacking of Viscount Cranborne - but in the coming week they'll be hoping to get back onto euro turf.

After the past few days, William Hague is looking sorely damaged and he needs to get his teeth into a major attack on the government. Before he can get stuck in, though, he has still some fall out from the Lords fiasco to deal with.

Monday is the likely day for announcing the finishing touches to the reshuffle that has arisen out of a string of front bench resignations in the lords.

He and the Tory whips will be hoping there are no more surprise departures to come: but they cannot be sure for a few days yet.

By the time Prime Minister's Questions come around on Wednesday he'll be hoping to be shifting the agenda onto what he will claim is the government's lack of principle and lack of resolve to oppose European integration.

Labour has been enjoying William Hague's difficulties in the Lords, but knows it still has some ground to make up after this week's scare stories about tax harmonisation.

The coming week the government will be trying to win back control of the agenda, arguing that it is neither selling out to the integrationists in europe, nor allowing itself to be isolated in the EU a la Thatcher.

The first opportunity comes on Monday when the foreign secretary will be attending a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels. Robin Cook is expected to head a discussion on the new Anglo-French proposals for Europe to develop its own defence capacity, which could be used without the Americans.

Defence is an area where the British government believes it can lead in Europe and the new proposals are a major departure from the UK's traditional refusal to endorse the EU becoming a defence entity.

The hope, is that Britain can wield influence in Europe in foreign affairs, in a way that will compensate for the loss of influence through not participating in the Euro.

But the big Euro event of the week is the Vienna summit, where all the EU heads of state are meeting. Defence, tax, the British rebate: on all these themes the government will be determined to show that they can be positively engaged in europe, without damaging UK interests.