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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Ukip turmoil leads to key Farage aide quitting the party - Politics live blog

Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

Evening summary

  • Nigel Farage has dismissed the row over his leadership as people “letting off steam”. He insisted that now, with a looming referendum on the EU, would be the wrong time to go, adding that he had an “astonishing amount of support in the party.”
  • Farage also said that Ukip will not take any of the £650,000 it is entitled to in short money. The money caused a dispute within the party after Ukip’s only MP, Douglas Carswell, refused to accept it. Farage said he didn’t want Ukip to look like other parties “grubbing around for public money”, and that it would instead raise funds privately.
  • Earlier today two of Farage’s key advisers left the party after being blamed by senior party figures for taking the party in a “poisonous” hard-right direction in the runup to the general election. Farage was also subject to personal attacks after Patrick O’Flynn, the party’s economic spokesman, accused him of turning Ukip into a “personality cult” and becoming a “snarling, thin-skinned, aggressive” man.
  • Tristram Hunt, shadow education secretary, has hinted that he may run as Labour leader. He said that he’s still to decide if he’s the right person for the job and admitted that Labour had experienced “an absolute hammering”. The party needs to offer a “broad message about the future of Britain that everyone can buy into,” he added.
  • Hunt also admitted that Labour overspent when it was in office, and said that it was too dependent on the financial services for its tax income. This afternoon, Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, rejected suggestions Labour spent too much. Cooper is a candidate for Labour leadership, as is Mary Creagh, the shadow international development secretary, who announced that she plans to stand on Thursday.

That’s all for today.

Q: Is the current electoral system fair?

Jeremy Hunt: the advantage of this system is that you have one party with a manifesto for which they are accountable

Tristram Hunt: The system has to change, but whatever that change is everyone must agree on it. We now live in a much more engage, diverse political landscape.

Farage says the current system is disenfranchising voters. When questioned about the £650,000 worth of short money that has caused a dispute within his party this week, he said: “I’m going to recommend we don’t take any of it, I’m going to recommend that we privately fundraise, we set up a structure and give those four million voters a chance to have their voices heard.”

He added that he didn’t want Ukip to look like other parties “grubbing around after public money.”

Updated

“Yes we overspent”, Tristram Hunt has admitted after audience members attacked Labour’s economic record. He said: “We needed more leeway in the public finances to deal with kind of crisis that hit us.”

The real issue, he added, was an “over-dependence on the financial services for our tax income”.

Q: What concessions should the PM try and get for Britain from the other EU countries?

Jeremy Hunt says: the “abuse of the freedom of movement across the EU - the movement of people who come here and don’t get a job and claim benefits, or the people who come here and do get a job but also claim in work benefits” should be a priority.

“We can’t have a system where we subsidise people to come here on low paid jobs...I don’t think David Cameron wants to leave the EU but he wants to get the right deal before he recommends to the British people that we stay in.”

Beddoes says: the UK benefits enormously from being part of EU, but rather than fighting for “concessions”, it should use negotiations as an opportunity to “turn the EU into something better.”

Updated

Q: Who is the best person to lead Labour?

Tristram Hunt, shadow education secretary, says he’s still to decide if he’s the right person for the job. He admitted that Labour had experienced “an absolute hammering” and said the party needed to offer a “broad message about the future of Britain that everyone can buy into”.

We face a problem with historically Labour communities who feel left behind by the impact of globalisation and who feel they aren’t succeeding in modern world...Then we have communities that are more prosperous but feel the Labour party doesn’t speak to them in terms of aspiration.

Farage says: Dan Jarvis, who has ruled himself out, might have been the kind of leader that could connect with the public.

Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor of the Economist: Labour will become electable once it moves back to the centre

With a looming EU referendum, Farage says now would have been 'the wrong time to go'.
With a looming EU referendum, Farage says now would have been ‘the wrong time to go’. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA

Farage has brushed over the personal insults and infighting that have engulfed Ukip, saying that he has an “astonishing amount of support in the party”.

They [party members] said you would be putting the party through unnecessary grief [by resigning], you’ve done a great job, the referendum is on the agenda, get on with it.

Updated

Only a few minutes into Question Time and Nigel Farage is already being grilled over his leadership of Ukip. Farage said he reversed his decision to resign after he being shown the signatures of thousands of members who didn’t want him to leave. “I felt moved by the strength of their appeal and said on the basis of that that I would continue.”

Now, with a looming referendum on the EU, would have been “the wrong time to go”, he said.

More of Friday’s papers are in. The Times leads with Ukip, reporting that Farage admits he has lost the confidence of his party:

The Independent reports that Cameron confronts Sturgeon over the SNP’s demands for more powers:

Shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt has hinted that he may run to be Labour party leader. Hunt said he was “interested in the leadership” of the party during an episode of Question Time that is being aired tonight, but stopped short of declaring his candidacy.

Lucy Powell, who was the vice chairwoman of the Labour party’s campaign, has written in the Mirror that she was both “both shocked and crushed” by the election results.

In a column for the paper she said she didn’t believe the exit poll when it was released at 10pm on election day.

The prediction - of the Tories as the largest party by some distance - was way off the figures that I and the Labour election team had been looking at only hours earlier. It wasn’t the exit poll that the pollsters, the pundits or even the Tories had expected. I spoke to Ed in Doncaster shortly afterwards and I tried to keep him positive but we both knew that the exit polls aren’t usually that wrong. As it turned out the exit poll underestimated the Tory victory. It was a night I will never forget - and the pain of that final result is still incredibly raw.

Powell said a key moment in the campaign was the intervention of John Major, who warned about the influence of the SNP on a minority Labour administration. Powell added that she lodged a formal complaint with the BBC about its coverage of Major’s comments, which she felt was disproportionate.

The first of tomorrow’s front pages have arrived. Friday’s Telegraph reports that Farage clings to his Ukip leadership:

Meanwhile the Daily Express urges Ukip to “stay united” and build on their election success. Earlier today Richard Desmond, owner of Express Newspapers who donated £1m to Ukip during their election campaign, said: “Nigel has my support 101%.”

And the Guardian reports that a senior SNP source says the party may hold its own referendum if number 10 refuses one:

Hi Rebecca Ratcliffe here. I’ll be keeping you updated on the infighting that has engulfed Ukip, and bringing you tomorrow’s front pages. Coming up at 10.45, Nigel Farage is due to appear on BBC Question Time alongside health secretary Jeremy Hunt, shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt, the Economist editor Zanny Minton Beddoes and Brian May.

Farage has already said that he believes he has lost the confidence of his party “big time”. After a day of infighting at the top of Ukip that resulted in the departure of two senior adviser, he is likely to face some awkward questions about his – and his party’s – future.

Our political correspondent, Rowena Mason, who followed Ukip throughout the election campaign, says the crisis is rooted in disagreements over the role Farage should play in the likely forthcoming referendum on Britain’s EU membership. She writes:

A source with knowledge of Ukip’s internal politics said the root of the battle for the heart of the party is about the role to be played by Farage in any EU referendum. Many eurosceptics, including some within the Tories and some within Ukip, fear the prospect of Farage being the voice of the “out” campaign, because he is too controversial.

Stuart Wheeler, who has given hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party, told BBC Radio 5 Live that it was “time for something quieter” in terms of the Ukip leadership. He said he thought Farage was exhausted, in pain from back problems and should have remained resigned at least until a new contest could be held in the autumn.

Farage has not lost his closest friend in the British press. According to the Press Association, Richard Desmond, the owner of Express Newspapers, who donated £1m to Ukip during the election campaign, said: “Nigel has my support 101%.”

Two former Ukip leaders have given differing views on Farage’s future. Roger Knapman, who was leader from 2002 to 2006, said the party’s future should be decided by its members. He told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme:

I don’t under-estimate what Nigel has achieved over the years but he cannot take up and put down the leadership crown at will. I do think it is time now party members had the opportunity to say whether or not there should be a leadership election.

Lord Pearson, leader between 2009 and 2010, backed Farage.

Nigel fought a brilliant election campaign and what an achievement it was to get nearly four million votes. Nigel has my full support as leader.

Afternoon summary

  • Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, appears to have backed down after one of the party’s most prominent MEPs launched a damning attack on two of his close advisers. Without naming them, Patrick O’Flynn said that the two figures were “poisonous” and that they were dragging the party in the wrong direction. O’Flynn said in an interview earlier today that he wanted Farage to stay, although he told the Times yesterday that Farage had become a “snarling, thin-skinned, aggressive” figure and Stuart Wheeler, a former Ukip treasurer, said today that Farage should go because he was too “divisive” to lead the party when it needed to win over waverers during the EU referendum campaign. Within the last few minutes it has been confirmed that Raheem Kassam, one of the advisers O’Flynn was referring to, has left the party. Another official, Matthew Richardson, the Ukip party secretary, has offered to resign. This is being intrepreted as a victory for O’Flynn.
  • Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary and Labour leadership contender, has rejected claims Labour spent too much when it was in office. (See 2.26pm.)
  • Mary Creagh, the shadow international development secretary, will stand for the Labour leadership, Bloomberg has revealed.
  • George Osborne, the chancellor, has said that he hopes that his plans to give Greater Manchester more control over its own spending will encourage other parts of the country to follow its example. In a speech in Manchester he said that if he tried to deliver devolution settlements to every city in England now he would fail.

Let me be candid. I think if I had tried to deliver, simultaneously, new devolution settlements in every major city, at the same time, and tried to get every city authority to accept new elected mayors, it simply would not have happened.

Getting Manchester through the Whitehall machinery and overcoming the political divide was difficult enough.

But I always thought this: if I could work with you to achieve this new model of civic leadership and local power here in greater Manchester, I could hold it up to the rest of the country as the example of what was possible.

If we here could step through this door to a better future, then others would follow. Not by force – as national government have so often tried to change local government – but by example and choice.

He also confirmed that Jim O’Neill, whom he described as “one of the world’s top economists”, was joining the government as a Treasury minister “to help make devolution and the Northern Powerhouse happen”.

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

George Osborne delivering his Northern Powerhouse speech.
George Osborne delivering his Northern Powerhouse speech. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Updated

Raheem Kassam has been tweeting about his departure.

Owen Bennett has cleared it up.

Raheem Kassam has offered his take on his departure.

Ukip may have told the media that Raheem Kassam is quitting before they told Kassam himself.

It has been confirmed that Raheem Kassam has left Ukip.

  • Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, appears to have backed down after one of the party’s most prominent MEPs launched a damning attack on two of his close advisers. Without naming them, Patrick O’Flynn said that the two figures were “poisonous” and that they were dragging the party in the wrong direction. O’Flynn said in an interview earlier that he wanted Farage to stay, although he told the Times yesterday that Farage had become a “snarling, thin-skinned, aggressive” figure and Stuart Wheeler, a former Ukip treasurer, said today that Farage should go because he was too “divisive” to lead the party when it needed to win over waverers during the EU referendum campaign. Within the last few minutes it has been reported that Raheem Kassam, one of the advisers O’Flynn was referring to, has resigned. Another official, Matthew Richardson, the Ukip party secretary, has offered to resign. This is being intrepreted as a victory for O’Flynn.

Updated

Raheem Kassam 'has left Ukip'

Raheem Kassam, the Ukip adviser at the centre of the row between Nigel Farage and Patrick O’Flynn, is leaving the party, the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope reports.

Two of the Ukip old guard and long-time MEPs have spoken out to back Farage.

Roger Helmer, the MEP who fought the Newark byelection, told the Guardian:

There has been some unfortunate briefing of the press on issues that should have been resolved privately but I don’t think there’s any substantial consequence although one or two of the two people might have to consider their positions. I’m referring to staff, not to members. Of course Nigel shouldn’t go. He’s the most substantial and respected figure in the party and he is absolutely the right person to fight the referendum campaign. He is the dominant person in the party and huge numbers of party members and activists contacted the NEC to call for him to stay.

Asked about the calls for Farage to go from Wheeler and Williams, he said: “People like to see their names in headlines but 98% of the party is fully behind Nigel.”

William Dartmouth, another MEP, told a Channel 4 News producer that he also backed Farage, saying: “It’s Nigel’s party”.

Updated

Downing Street has announced today that six people are being made peers to allow them to join the government. In addition to Jim O’Neill (see 2.56pm), they are: Francis Maude, who is becoming a combined Foreign Office/trade minister; Ros Altmann, who becomes a pension minister; George Bridges, who becomes a Cabinet Office minister; David Prior, who becomes a health minister; and Andrew Dunlop, who becomes a Scotland Office minister.

Dunlop was Cameron’s special adviser on Scottish matters and worked for Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit when the poll tax was introduced in Scotland. The SNP has condemned his appointment. In a statement Angus Robertson, the SNP leader at Westminster, said:

This appointment is a scandal. If one thing demonstrates how out of touch the Tories are, it’s the appointment as a government minister for Scotland of an unelected Lord who played a leading role in the imposition of the hated poll tax on Scotland.

It is hard to believe that following the worst Tory result in a general Eelection in Scotland since universal suffrage that they could have fallen further in people’s estimation, but they just have with this appalling and anti-democratic appointment.

The BBC’s Norman Smith blundered today when he was trying to say the word “cult” in a report on the Ukip row today. He did a Naughtie and said something else instead.

Here’s Nigel Farage being doorstepped this morning. He denied that Ukip was falling apart, and said that it was not his fault Ukip’s national executive committee refused his resignation.

Jim O'Neill joins government as Treasury minister for city devolution

Jim O’Neill, the former Goldman Sachs chief economist, is going to join the government as a Treasury minister in charge of city devolution and infrastructure.

He is being given a peerage, so he can sit in the Lords, but he will not take a salary.

O’Neill, who is famous for coining the BRICs acronym for the emerging economies Brazil, Rusia, India and China, chaired the RSA city growth commission, making him well placed to help George Osborne promote his Northern Powerhouse agenda.

Yvette Cooper rejects claims Labour government spent too much

Labour was damaged during the election by the perception that it spent too much money before the crash and people like Alan Johnson have argued that, when Ed Miliband was attacked over this on the election Question Time, that was a key moment in the campaign. Not surprisingly, this has become a big issue in the Labour leadership contest.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary who launched her campaign today, was asked about this on the World at One. Although she conceded that some spending was misplaced, essentially she did not accept that Labour overspent generally. (The Press Association version of this story is headlined: Labour did not overspend - Cooper.) Asked about this, she told WATO:

I think there were things that we were spending wrongly on. There were issues that we would have been spending too much money on. For example, there were things that went wrong with NHS computer systems, with all sorts of things like that. But the deficit at the time was 0.6%, the current deficit, and all the political parties at the time were all supporting the spending plans, and that was all due to come down.

But I think there’s been a focus on that as if that was the economic issue of the time, and the real economic issue of the time was that we had banks who were involved in huge private lending that nobody had spotted the scale of; private sector debt that had been growing up that was unsecured; the links between the financial sector all over the world, particularly into the housing market crisis in America, because if you remember it started with those bad loans in America that then shot across the world.

Should the Labour government have done much more to deal with that? Yes, absolutely. Should we have had much stronger regulation of the banks? Yes, absolutely. Should other countries have also done the same? Yes, absolutely.

Other leadership contenders have taken a different approach. This is what Liz Kendall said on Newsnight last night.

I think that we were spending too much before the crash but we did not cause the financial crisis, that was global. And actually I think what really concerned people was that we seemed too slow to really face up to the challenge, I think that’s true in 2010 and in 2015, that we needed to balance the books and live within our means. That was the real problem and that was the real reason why people didn’t trust us on the economy.

And this is what Chuka Umunna said on Sunday.

Going into the crash, should we have been running albeit a small and unremarkable deficit? Of course we shouldn’t.

Cooper’s line is broadly the one that was taken by the party before the general election and that was established by Ed Balls, the former shadow chancellor and Cooper’s husband. Balls used to say that, although not every penny was necessarily spent wisely, Labour did not knowingly run a structural deficit. Kendall and Umunna are saying something that Miliband and Balls would not say during the campaign.

Where all the candidates agree is that, whether Labour spent too much or not, Labour spending did not cause the crash. It is easy for them to agree on this, because Labour spending certainly didn’t cause the crash.

Yvette Cooper at Stanville Primary School in Birmingham today.
Yvette Cooper at Stanville Primary School in Birmingham today. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA

Arron Banks, the Ukip donor, has told the Financial Times (subscription) that he thinks figures like Patrick O’Flynn are trying to mount a coup against Nigel Farage. Banks told the paper:

The truth is that Carswell got 25,000 votes but Nigel got 4m. The rank and file members know that. Nigel got 99.6 per cent of the total votes to Carswell’s 0.4 per cent.

Patrick needs to look at himself before he goes around criticising others. They should let Nigel have a holiday after a long hard election rather than plotting a coup d’état.

Here is a Guardian video of the journalist Owen Bennett, author of a forthcoming book about Nigel Farage, talking about today’s turmoil in the party.

Michael Crick, the Channel 4 News, reporter, seems to be doorstepping the restaurant where Nigel Farage is having lunch. But he thinks he could be there a while.

The Ukip adviser Raheem Kassam has spoken to Sky.

In his Sky interview Patrick O’Flynn did not name the Ukip advisers he thought were dragging the party in the wrong direction, but at one stage he described them as “wrong ‘uns”.

On his Twitter profile, Kassam now describes himself as a “wrong ‘un”.

Raheem Kassam, the Nigel Farage adviser who is understood to be the target of some of Patrick O’Flynn’s criticisms (see 1.26pm), is not resigning, the BBC reports.

Here are the key points from Stuart Wheeler’s interview.

  • Wheeler said that Nigel Farage should step down as Ukip leader because he was too “aggressive” and “divisive” to lead the party successfully during the EU referendum. Farage was not best placed to win over undecided votes, Wheeler said.

Personally I would not want him to be the leader now. I don’t think the way he resumed his leadership was done in the right way. And I think in the crucial in/out referendum, which it looks as if we’re going to get, I think that all the peope who voted Ukip in the election will vote to leave the EU. And the crucial thing that needs to be done is to win over the undecideds, in a quiet kind of way. And I’m not sure that Nigel is the right person to do that ... He’s quite aggressive, rather fun style, but I think it is a bit divisive. A rather quieter approach would be a better method than the method by which he’s become so well-known and popular, which is highly effective, but I think it’s now time for something quieter.

  • Wheeler said that he was a big admirer of Farage, but thought he was currently “exhausted”.
  • Wheeler said that Douglas Carswell would be a suitable replacement. But there were other possible alternative leaders too, Wheeler said.
Stuart Wheeler
Stuart Wheeler Photograph: Cate Gillon/Getty Images

Stuart Wheeler, former Ukip treasurer says Farage too 'aggressive' to lead Ukip now

Stuart Wheeler, the Ukip donor and former party treasurer, says he is a big admirer of Nigel Farage.

But Farage is exhausted and in pain, Wheeler says.

He says, having resigned last Friday, Farage should have stayed resigned, at least until the autumn.

But Wheeler says that he also thinks that Farage is not the best person to lead the party now.

The priority is to win the EU referendum. Farage is too “aggressive” and divisive. It would be better to have someone quieter, he says.

Q: So who could lead Ukip?

It could be Douglas Carswell, says Wheeler. But, he says, he has other potential candidates in mind too. He won’t name them.

And that’s it.

I’ll post the quotes shortly.

Updated

Here’s my colleague Rowena Mason’s story on the Ukip crisis. And here’s how it starts.

Nigel Farage is facing a “coup” against his position as head of Ukip after one of the party’s biggest donors called for a leadership contest.

Stuart Wheeler, who has given hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party, said he would like to see Farage stand aside now and face a vote. Speaking on BBC 5Live, he said it was “now time for something quieter” in terms of the Ukip leadership.

Festering tensions at the heart of the party broke into the open after Patrick O’Flynn, the party’s campaign director, said Farage had turned into a “snarling, thin-skinned and aggressive” man during the election and warned of it turning into a personality cult ...

O’Flynn refused to name who he wanted out of the leader’s team but it is understood that he and Carswell are gunning for Raheem Kassam, Farage’s senior personal adviser, who is understood to be out of the country at the moment, and Matthew Richardson, the party secretary, over a feeling that they were responsible for American-style attack politics that may have alienated more moderate voters. Richardson is reported to have offered his resignation.

Sky has confirmed that Matthew Richardson, the Ukip party secretary, has offered to resign.

Mark Reckless, the former Ukip MP, has refused to back Nigel Farage as leader.

Patrick O'Flynn's Sky interview - Summary

Here are the key points from Patrick O’Flynn’s Sky interview.

  • O’Flynn said that Nigel Farage was his “political hero” and that he wanted Farage to stay as leader. Striking a different note from the one he took in his Times interview (see 9.03am), O’Flynn said:

If anyone thinks or supposes that I’m planning some kind of coup against Nigel they couldn’t be more wrong – he is my political hero and will remain so, and he’s done amazing things and I’ve been a loyal supporter of his leadership all the way along.

  • O’Flynn said Farage’s problem was that he was under the influence of two “poisonous” advisers. O’Flynn refused to say who they were, but he said that they needed to go.

I believe there are a couple of people around [Farage] who I won’t name who are influencing him in the wrong direction.

They have been given far too much sway, far too much influence, and have treated certain very loyal party staffers absolutely abysmally and someone needs to call time on them. So, let’s be clear, those are the people I have an issue with.

I am a loyal supporter of Nigel Farage’s leadership. I just want to get it back to how it was before this group came to prominence.

  • O’Flynn said the problem was that the rogue advisers were pushing the party to the right.

[There are] some people around [Farage] who would like to take Ukp in the direction of some hard-right, ultra aggressive American Tea Party-type movement. Ukip will prosper and has prospered when it positions itself in the common sense centre of British politics, as we did with our excellent election manifesto, and when Nigerl Farage leads it from the centre of the party, or perhaps just to the right of centre of the party. People who want to get rid of the National Health Service or liberalise gun laws or whatever other US imports they want to peddle for their own agendas should go and set up a party to push that line and see how they get on, because I predict it won’t be well.

It is our duty in Ukip, from the leader downwards, to maximise our chances of winning this EU referendum in two years’ time, or perhaps even less. We have to be inclusive, we have to bring in groups of non-traditional supporters, we have to reach out, we have to be team players in that wider Eurosceptic movement.

  • O’Flynn said he did not want Farage to stand down as leader. Asked if Farage should resign, O’Flynn replied:

No. He was elected last year unoppose for a four-year term. I would much rather there had been none of this hiatus about leadershp at all. He should serve the four-year term, he should lead us into the referendum campaign, he should recapture the optimistic, cheerful, reaching-out, cheeky Nigel Farage that was such an inspiration to me. I believe he can.

  • O’Flynn said it was a mistake for Farage to say he would resign if he did not win his election in South Thanet. If Farage had not given that pledge, he would not have got into the situation where he resigned, then “unresigned” three days later.

The advisers he has got around him have got an awful lot to account for because, as I say in the Times, this risks giving the perception of turning us into a personality cult, where you have a leader resigning and unresigning. Far better that he had not made that statement in the first place.

  • O’Flynn dismissed reports that people in the party were briefing against him. Confronted with what some party members are saying about him today (see 12.41pm), and asked what that said about Ukip, he replied:

It gives me a sense of a couple of rather poisonous individuals who are seeking to project themselves as essential to the leadership when they are just concerned about their own position.

  • He claimed his intervention today would be helpful.

I think my intervention wil prove to be very helfpul because I think things were reaching an unsustainable footing interms of the influence of these individuals.

Patrick O'Flynn
Patrick O’Flynn Photograph: Sky News

Updated

Nigel Farage has told the BBC that it is not his fault he is staying on as leader.

If the NEC [national executive committee] unanimously back me, that’s not my fault, is it?

Farage was doorstepped going into a building. He did not give a full interview.

Guido Fawkes says Matthew Richardson, the Ukip party secretary who is close to Nigel Farage, has offered to resign.

But ConservativeHome’s Mark Wallace says Richardson has been planning to go for months.

Updated

Ukip donor Stuart Wheeler says Farage should resign

Stuart Wheeler, a major Ukip donor and former party treasurer, has now said Nigel Farage should resign.

He has spoken to Radio 5 Live.

And Wheeler will be on the World at One.

Updated

Mark Wallace at ConservativeHome has more information about the way figures in the Nigel Farage camp are briefing against Patrick O’Flynn. Here’s an extract.

Carswell’s future remains in his own hands – without him, the party wouldn’t get any Short Money at all, so Farage cannot simply banish him. As the only People’s Army MP, his loss would also be a huge loss in standing, influence and reputation.

So, with few options on that front, the Dear Leader is turning all his ire on O’Flynn – after all, he has plenty more MEPs, this one in particular has been wounded for some months now and today’s attack is miles over the normal line. This morning I received, unsolicited, an extraordinary quote about Patrick from someone who can accurately be called a senior UKIP official and leading Faragiste:

“O’Flynn is a totally inexperienced campaign director and a candidate who struggled to retain his deposit, getting just 5.2%. A scribbler with a single tier education he struggled as Economics spokesman , trying to impose envy taxes and was keen on Red Ken Livingstone’s idea of a turnover tax on companies.”

(As he went to Cambridge and has a qualification in journalism, I can only conclude that “single tier education” line refers to him having gone to a Community College rather than a Grammar School, by the way.)

The strength of that attack seems to leave little doubt that the intention of some of those around the leader is to obliterate and/or drive out Patrick O’Flynn if they possibly can. If I were him, I wouldn’t go too close to any anti-aircraft guns any time soon.

(Perhaps “single-tier education” means O’Flynn hasn’t got a postgraduate qualification, but I don’t know. Any ideas?)

O'Flynn says Farage must get rid of two 'poisonous' advisers

Q: But people are saying very negative things about you. What does that say about the party?

O’Flynn says all that tells you is that there are a couple of “poisonous” individuals in the party. They have treated loyal party members very badly.

Q: Who are you talking about?

O’Flynn says he will not name them. But journalists have a fair idea, he says.

The party staff and senior elected politicians in the party are overwhelmingly supportive of Farage and his leadership, he says. But the “poisonous” advisers have to to go.

The interview is over. I will post the full quotes shortly.

Patrick O'Flynn says he does not want Farage to step down

Patrick O’Flynn, the Ukip MEP and election campaign manager, is being interviewed on Sky now.

He says he would have advised Nigel Farage not to say that he was going to stand down if he did not win the election.

He tried to get in touch with Farage on the night of the election, to tell him that he should take some time to reflect on what to do. But he could not get through to him.

O’Flynn blames Farage’s advisers. Farage should listen to those who have Farage’s best interests at party, not those advisers who want to take the party down a hard-right course.

Ukip does best when it is in the mainstream, he says.

Those who want to liberalise gun laws or get rid of the NHS should set up their own party and see how the prosper, he says.

Q: Should Nigel Farage step down?

No, says O’Flynn. He says Farage was elected last year for a four-year term. He should serve that term, and lead the party during the referendum campaign.

Farage says his issue is with two of Farage’s advisers. He won’t name them, because he does not want to dignify them.

Douglas Carswell has said he is not leaving Ukip.

I’m not sure how many people did expect Carswell to leave Ukip. You can defect from one political party and remain a credible figure, but to defect from two within under a year would probably put you in joke territory.

Updated

The Electoral Commission has disclosed it is considering action against the pro-UK campaign Better Together after it filed incomplete returns for its spending during the independence referendum.

In a statement which disclosed that all 42 registered campaigns spent £6.6m during the official campaign period, the commission said it was discussing the Better Together spending returns with prosecutors at the Crown Office before considering what action to take.

It is understood the concern is over a handful of missing train ticket receipts which Better Together, which was headed by the former Labour chancellor Alistair Darling, could not provide. The tickets were bought online but no official receipts were printed off.

It reported: “Registered referendum campaigners were required to submit to the commission invoices over £200. The submitted return of the registered campaigner Better Together is missing some information making the return incomplete.

“[We] are consulting with the Crown Office [COPFS] in order for them to consider whether they will open an investigation into this matter. Depending on the response from the COPFS the Commission will then consider whether to take any further action itself.”

The commission said that Better Together and the official pro-independence campaign Yes Scotland spent close to their £1.5m limits, spending £1.4m apiece during the official campaign period from 30 May 2014.

The Scottish National party spent just under its £1.3m allocation, while Labour spent £732,000 and the Tories £356,000. The Scottish Lib Dems spent under the higher reporting threshold of £250,000.

From the start of financial reporting in December 2013, Better Together raised £4.3m in donations above £500, and Yes Scotland £2.8m.

There are several other investigations under way into incomplete or missing spending returns. The Electoral Commission is investigating the pro-yes group Labour for Independence for failing to file accounts, while the Crown Office is investigating the pro-yes blog and campaign Wings over Scotland.

Turning away from Ukip for a moment, a cross-party committee in the Scottish parliament has published a report saying the UK government’s plans to devolve more power to Scotland do not meet “the spirit or the substance” of the cross-party agreement on devolution. The devolution committee has unanimously decided that the draft Scotland Bill does not implement all the ideas in the Smith Commission report published last year. Committee convener Bruce Crawford said:

The committee believes that the current proposals do not yet meet the challenge of fully translating the political agreement reached in the Smith Commission into legislation.

For example, as we heard in our evidence taking, there is no power for the Scottish Parliament to top up reserved benefits despite that being one of the powers highlighted at the time of publication. The committee also seeks reassurance that any new benefits or top-up benefits introduced in Scotland would result in additional income for a recipient.

The committee is disappointed that the currently proposed legislation sells Smith short.

In the immediate aftermath of the UK general election, the prime minister indicated that he was committed to delivering on the recommendations of the Smith Commission. As a committee we call on the new UK Government to consider our report - agreed unanimously - as a matter of urgency and to work with the Scottish parliament to help ensure that we have legislation that achieves the objectives that all five parties on the committee signed up for.

In response a Scotland Office spokesman said:

The UK government is committed to delivering more devolved powers through the package outlined by the cross-party Smith Commission. We will work to bring forward a Scotland Bill on this basis and ensure the Scottish Parliament becomes one of the most powerful devolved parliaments in the world. The secretary of state has been clear there will be a full parliamentary discussion of these issues where differing views can be heard.

Bruce Crawford MSP
Bruce Crawford MSP Photograph: Andrew Cowan/Scottish Parliament/PA

Turning away from Ukip for a moment, here’s some news from the Lib Dem leadership contest. At one point this week Greg Mulholland hinted that he might stand himself. He has decided not to. Instead he is backing Tim Farron and serving as his campaign manager.

Godfrey Bloom says Farage should resign and Carswell should take over as Ukip leader

Here are the key points from Victoria Derbyshire’s BBC interview with Godfrey Bloom, the former Ukip MEP.

  • Bloom said Nigel Farage should resign.

Nigel said he would resign [if he did not win South Thanet]. He said that was the right thing. This is the seventh time he has failed to win a seat. Clearly Ukip need to sit down and change their strategy. Yes, there should be a leadership election ...

He’s clearly now an extremely tired and stressed man. Time for him to move over, one might think.

  • He said that Farage was a poor manager and would not tolerate dissent.

He would not argue that his best skill is man management. He is not man-manager, that’s for sure ... He is rather capable of some abrasive behaviour, which is why, of course, in 2009 the party started with 13 MEPs and ended up with five. He’s not a team player. He’s very popular with the membership, but sooner or later Ukip is going to have to decide whether or not it wants someone who is popular in a Ukip conference hall or popular with the electorate ...

One of the problems that Ukip have had now for several years is that any criticism, constructive criticism of policy or the leadership, has got you sacked. You do not criticise the leadership and stay in office. You are out of the door at the speed of light.

  • He said Ukip should move on from being a one-man protest party.

Ukip have got to mature. Ukip have got to understand, do they want to be Nigel Farage’s purple army of protest? Or do they want to metamorphose into a political party? And we are at the crossroads now. And, if it’s going to be a political party, it has to be somebody who can lead a team at the top. And you have to have a team player, which Nigel is just simply not.

  • He said Douglas Carswell should be the next leader.

I would suggest that the leader should [be] the person who has been elected to Westminster. The fight is from Westminster now, Westminster is the place that Ukip wanted to be, which means Douglas Carswell. Regardless of your feelings for Douglas Carswell, he is clearly one of the most highly principled men in politics. He is the Dennis Skinner of the right, if you will. So he’s a man of extraordinary presence and I think naturally should step forward now. For the good of the party, I think they should unite behind him.

Carwell has repeatedly said he does not want to be leader. This is what he said after his byelection win last year.

I never will be the leader of the United Kingdom Independence party and I will never seek to be the leader of the UK Independence Party. I don’t have the qualities, including the endless reservoirs of patience that are required to do that. If I was ever to be the leader of the party it would be bad for me, bad for my family and disastrous for the party.

Updated

More from Godfrey Bloom, the former Ukip MEP.

I’ll post the key quotes shortly.

Matthew Goodwin, the academic and Ukip specialist who co-authored Revolt on the Right and who is writing a book about Ukip’s election campaign, tells me the current crisis - with Nigel Farage at war with both Douglas Carswell and Patrick O’Flynn - could be the most serious in Ukip’s history.

In the history of Ukip, this split is perhaps the most significant of all. They are all senior players, and some of those who are criticising Nigel Farage were personally recruited by Farage, including Patrick O’Flynn.

It is difficult to see how this can be resolved in a quick manner. It has also arrived just at the moment when we have seen evidence at the election of how Ukip is able to attract support in Conservative and Labour areas.

Goodwin also thinks it would be a mistake to assume that Farage will be forced out. Polling evidence suggests that, with the 2015 Ukip electorate, Farage is more popular than alternative Ukip leaders like Suzanne Evans, the Ukip deputy chairman, he says. And he also points out that Farage has a history of seeing off his opponents.

There’s a saying in Ukip, ‘In the history of infighting, Nigel has never lost.’ That goes back to Kilroy Silk.

Updated

Godfrey Bloom, the former Ukip MEP who left the party after he had the whip withdrawn for making crass comments, has criticised Nigel Farage.

Douglas Carswell, the sole Ukip MP, is not saying anything in public about the row this morning, according to the FT’s Jim Pickard.

But others are talking about Carswell.

Patrick O’Flynn will be giving an interview to Sky News within the next hour or so, Sky reports.

The BBC’s Norman Smith has also had an anti-Farage briefing from a senior Ukip source. Whether or not it is the same source who spoke to Robin Brant (see 9.45am) we can’t tell, because he/she spoke to both journalists anonymously, but here are the comments, for what they are worth.

Robin Brant has also spoken to the Ukip donor Arron Banks about the Farage/O’Flynn row. Banks sided with Farage.

Updated

The BBC’s Robin Brant says he has been speaking to a senior Ukip figure who backs Patrick O’Flynn’s comments about Nigel Farage.

Updated

Douglas Carswell has been reading the Times too.

The Times has also published a letter from Lord Ryder, the Conservative peer and former chief whip in the Commons (paywall), effectively siding with Douglas Carswell, Ukip’s sole MP, in his row with Nigel Farage about whether or not the party should claim £650,000 in Short money. Here’s an extract.

I was in charge of Margaret Thatcher’s leader of the opposition office in 1975 when Ted Short, the leader of the House of Commons, introduced his measure, which was designed to assist our work in parliament with state funding. Short, an austere former headteacher, made it clear to me in person that the money was to be used solely for running the leader of the opposition’s office in parliament. It was never to be transferred to Conservative Central Office. Short, in his headmasterly manner, made me promise to abide by this instruction. I did so until we were elected to government four years later.

In the case of Ukip I trust that the parliamentary authorities will adhere to Short’s original strictures on the use of public money, namely that it should be allocated solely for work in the House of Commons and never for the wider benefit of the party outside.

The Carswell/Short money row is generating some wry comment on Twitter. This is from the journalist Tom Sutcliffe.

The Conservative MP Michael Fabricant thinks it’s time for a Ukip “Downfall” video.

James O’Brien, the LBC presenter who conducted an acclaimed and highly aggressive interview with Nigel Farage before the European elections last year, thinks Patrick O’Flynn’s comments have vindicated the criticisms he has been making of Farage himself.

It look as if Patrick O’Flynn has no intention of staying quiet today. This is what he’s posted on Twitter.

We’re trying to get a chat with him.

Good morning. Parliament is not sitting yet, but there are at least four big stories on the go. These are the issues I will be focusing on today.

Ukip turmoil

Patrick O’Flynn, the Ukip MEP and the party’s campaign director, has condemned the party leader, Nigel Farage, in an interview with the Times (paywall). My colleague Rowena Mason has written it up here. And here’s an extract from the Times’ story.

Nigel Farage has become a “snarling, thin-skinned, aggressive” man who is making Ukip look like a “personality cult”, the party’s campaign director has claimed in a devastating attack.

Patrick O’Flynn, the party’s economics spokesman and one of its most senior MEPs, breaks cover today to warn that the Ukip leader’s recent behaviour risked depicting the party as an “absolute monarchy” ...

Mr O’Flynn said that recent days had been a “fiasco” for Ukip. “What’s happened since Thursday night, Friday morning has certainly laid us open to the charge that this looks like an absolutist monarchy or a personality cult,” he said. “I don’t think that even Nigel would say it’s been the most glorious chapter of his leadership.”

While he praised the Ukip manifesto and described Ukip’s 12.6 per cent share of the vote as “remarkable”, he said the party had to ask itself why it had failed to secure a string of winnable seats, including Mr Farage’s own target in Kent.

“The team around Nigel himself need to reflect why it was that Thanet voted in a Ukip council but didn’t vote in Nigel as the MP for Thanet South,” Mr O’Flynn said.

Labour leadership

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has launched her leadership campaign with an article in the Daily Mirror. Here is the Guardian’s story, and here is an extract from the Mirror article.

In the end, Labour didn’t convince enough people that we had the answers.

They liked a lot of what we had to say, about raising the minimum wage, expanding childcare, cutting tax for low paid workers and banning bad zero hours contracts. But for many people it wasn’t enough to give them hope and confidence we could match all their ambitions for the future ...

Going back to the remedies of the past, of Gordon Brown or Tony Blair, won’t keep up with the way the world has changed.

We need a Labour party that moves beyond the old labels of left and right, and focuses four-square on the future. Credible, compassionate, creative, and connected to the day to day realities of life.

Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, launched his campaign last night with this video.

And Liz Kendall, a shadow health minister, was interviewed on Newsnight last night.

Northern powerhouse

As Patrick Wintour reports, George Osborne will today use a speech to invite England’s big cities to join Manchester in bidding for devolved powers, as long as they agree to be governed by a directly elected mayor.

The chancellor will also announce that the Queen’s speech will include powers to deliver Greater Manchester’s first mayor through the cities devolution bill.

The powers on offer to combined authorities with an elected mayor will cover transport, housing, planning, policing and public health.

The speech is due at about 3pm.

Lib Dem leadership

Tim Farron has confirmed that he is standing for the Lib Dem leadership.

If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow

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