ANNE MCELVOY: Now EU 'Outers' launch all-out war... on each other 

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Germany is the Prime Minister’s destination of choice these days – he’s just returned from a last-ditch trip to Hamburg to seek yet more advice from Angela Merkel. ‘She might as well join Dave’s Cabinet,’ jibes a Foreign Office Minister.

I gather that before they met for a banquet in Hamburg’s ornate City Hall, the German Chancellor ‘strongly encouraged’ the PM to stay away from focusing too relentlessly on demands for more national sovereignty.

That hobby horse annoys abrasive European Parliament President Martin Schulz, who scorns the aspiration as a foible of headstrong Brits.

Never say die: the PM plunged into the topic in his Hamburg speech.

David Cameron and Angela Merkel have been meeting together so frequently of late that one Foreign Office Minister joked 'she might as well join Dave's Cabinet'

He was urged on by two of the most important Cabinet waverers, Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, and Business Secretary Sajid Javid, who told him to fight harder for repatriation of law-making powers.

That reflects Cameron’s bigger headache of how to present a modest package of pledges on EU migrant welfare reform, some light airbrushing of the ‘ever-closer union’ commitment and a ‘red card’ on legislation contested by a British Parliament. Alas, that would require fully 15 countries to support it to be enacted.

Cameron’s uphill task has not been made easier by the intervention this week by Marina Wheeler QC, aka Mrs Boris Johnson, who lambasted the ‘jurisdictional muscle-flexing of the Court of Justice in Luxembourg’ in a Spectator article. Outspoken Ms Wheeler is being dubbed Madame Mao in the Westminster tearoom by those who think her views might hint at Boris’s final referendum intentions.

Dave’s struggles should be catnip to the ‘Out’ campaigns. Yet I can reveal that the mood at Vote Leave, the main anti-EU group, remains febrile after an attempted coup against the respective campaign director and chief executive, Dominic Cummings and Matthew Elliott, left blood on the floor and sore egos.

Insiders blame Labour Eurosceptic Nigel Griffiths (pictured) for stirring up trouble

Insiders blame Labour Eurosceptic Nigel Griffiths for stirring up trouble. Griffiths, an independently minded, former Labour Deputy Leader of the House (I referred to him in error as Deputy Speaker last week), is not alone in his concerns.

Bill Cash, the stalwart Eurosceptic MP, tells me he is annoyed that Vote Leave’s website attacks ‘Westminster’ and lashes out at ‘politicians’ failure’ on Europe.

He has asked the campaign to change the wording, to show less blanket hostility to MPs. ‘So far they haven’t done it,’ he sighs.

Cash adds that it is ‘an oddity for Vote Leave to campaign to restore sovereignty to Westminster, while claiming all politicians are at fault. If we’re all so flawed, why fight to return sovereignty to us?’

Neither has hanging on to prominent female voices been a strong point for the pugnacious duo at the helm. Ruth Lea, an outspoken Eurosceptic economist and City figure, left Vote Leave this week, telling me she felt elbowed aside in the way the campaign is run.

‘If I felt that I had been involved in the way economic arguments were made and was able to make a real contribution, I would have stayed,’ Lea tells me candidly.

‘I’m not quite sure what Vote Leave are delivering at the moment,’ she adds. ‘And I also don’t want to be involved with warring factions.’

Lea has transferred her loyalty to the Grassroots Out campaign, and will shortly be reunited at an event with Labour’s Kate Hoey, who has also quit Vote Leave.

Grassroots Out is hoping that a surge in support means that it can compete with Vote Leave and the pro-Ukip Leave.EU for the Electoral Commission’s designation as official opposition to the ‘Remain’ campaign.

This internecine contest looks increasingly feisty, before the Eurosceptics take on the foe that counts: Team Cameron and the ‘Remainers’.

You would have thought Jeremy Corbyn would be flattered to have a biography out a mere six months after emerging from obscurity. Not a bit of it. He is fuming about unspecified ‘inaccuracies’ in Rosa Prince’s Comrade Corbyn, claiming ‘14 on the first eight pages I read’.

When Rosa contacted people who knew Corbyn, she apparently did so ‘in the wrong way’, he says. Clearly it is very hard to please Comrade Corbyn.

Now I gather that further upset is brewing over the future of Corbyn’s spokesman, Seumas Milne who, Guardian sources whisper, may be encouraged not to return to his job there.

But Milne is a determined sort. Allies point out that he insisted on a ‘very carefully worded contract’ when he moved to Westminster, with legal backing for his return. Crucially, Milne never resigned and took only an unspecific period of leave to work for the Labour leader.

A wise precaution, given the electoral outlook.

Tory shock as Liz rocks the glossy granny look 

Liz Truss has long ranked as the Tories’ favourite ‘Hitchcock blonde’ – always impeccably coiffed.

The task of dealing with floods and pestilence at the Department for Environment has however brought out the Norfolk MP’s serious side. She surprised guests at the lavish Black And White Ball Tory fundraiser a few days ago, by embracing the trend for ‘granny hair’ – the fashionably glossy grey look rocked by Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.

Liz Truss surprised guests at the lavish Black And White Ball Tory fundraiser a few days ago, by embracing the trend for ‘granny hair’

In the day job, one of Truss’s duties is to battle against invasive animal species threatening Britain’s shores.

The latest, she tells me, is the arrival of the quagga mussel, which blocks pipes, fouls boat hulls and affects freshwater quality. The little pest has migrated from the Caspian Sea, via Eastern Europe and Germany, to Britain’s shores. A new migrant crisis for the Cabinet’s grey lady to sort out.

• Anne McElvoy is senior editor at The Economist