Sunday politics

Was Nigel Farage ‘absent on the job’ this week, addressing a conference in America instead of focusing on the immigration figures and Ukip’s spring conference? He defended the trip on the Sunday Politics today, arguing that he recorded plenty of radio and TV interviews from Washington. ‘I did quite honestly as much media from Washington as I would have done had I been in Westminster,’ he said. When pushed again by Andrew Neil on whether he'd have better served Ukip by staying at home, Farage responded ‘with all due respect, I can’t see the difference’ between doing the interviews in Washington and Westminster.

With the Tories currently getting flak for holding a ball for the party's super rich donors in the same week queries were raised about their tax habits, Ken Clarke appeared on the Sunday Politics to deny any suggestions of wrongdoing. He did, however, say that a 'more defensible system' should be put in place with a 'donation cap' and state funding so parties do not become overly reliant on rich individuals. Until that happens it's business as usual for the Conservatives. According to the latest register of interests, Nicola Blackwood, the Conservative MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, accepted a £10,000 donation from George Robinson.

Do the Green Party's policies stack up? Although its membership and prominence have rocketed in recent weeks, little focus has been put on what the party campaigns for. Green leader Natalie Bennett was subjected to a dissection of her party’s principles on the Sunday Politics today (watch above) and demonstrated why most of its proposals are pipe dreams. Bennett said her party wants to ensure ‘nobody is living in fear’ but exactly how they would pay for that remains unanswered. One of its policies would be a ‘Citizens’ Income’, ensuring everyone has a minimum weekly income of £72.

Philip Hammond's promotion to Foreign Secretary means that we now have a Foreign Secretary who is on the record as saying he would vote to leave the EU unless substantial powers are returned. This is a major challenge to Foreign Office orthodoxy.

Ukip may be sailing towards first place in the European elections, but Nigel Farage unwittingly revealed today how the party is still a long way from becoming a mature political movement. During his interview on the Sunday Politics, Farage didn't seem to know what was in Ukip's local election manifesto — in particular whether the party was promising to make any spending cuts. This is a transcript of what he said: Andrew Neil: You have promised these tax cuts, how much will they cost? Nigel Farage: No idea. I’m not here to talk about, I’ve read the local election manifesto and it doesn't make those promises. AN: It does NF: We do talk about local services, we do talk about the need to keep council tax down but we don't talk about income tax. Absolutely not.

Today’s newspapers do not make happy reading for Maria Miller - or David Cameron. After informing the press that it was ‘time to draw a line’ under Miller’s expenses, he ought to have known what to expect. The Sunday Times splashes with ‘MPs can’t be trusted on expenses’ while the Sunday Telegraph quotes an anonymous minister saying ‘Maria must go’. The Mail on Sunday has commissioned some polling, to the effect that 80 per cent of the public want her out of the cabinet. According to the Survation polling, 82 per cent of Conservative voters want her to be sacked, while two thirds of Tories think she should resign from Parliament: [datawrapper chart="http://static.spectator.co.uk/z8bs7/index.

Who votes Ukip? It’s a question psephologists have been trying to answer for years but Nigel Farage had a clear response on the Sunday Politics today: not just disaffected Conservatives. Based on research by Lord Ashcroft, Farage boasted that ’new Ukip’ — a party which is 'a lot of more professional, a lot more smiley, a lot less angry’ — now has such a great influence on the Labour party, they will be forced into changing their stance on an EU referendum following May’s Euro elections: 'There's a long way to go between now and the next election. As we've seen with Conservative policy, it chops and changes...

At last - Labour has made its intentions over education clear. Throughout his interview on the Sunday Politics today, Tristram Hunt showed that Labour has switched allegiances to adults, not the pupils. On the side of institutions, not those who use them. Although the shadow education secretary stated he ‘doesn’t want to waste political energy on undoing reforms that, in certain situations, build rather successfully on Labour party policy’, he confirmed his party would not sanction any more free schools: 'I was in Stroud on Thursday and plans there for a big new style of school in an area where you’ve got surplus places threatened to destroy the viability of small local rural schools.

Andrew Neil’s interview on Sunday Politics the other week triggered much reaction – and protest from those who do not believe that there is a debate to be had. Andrew has replied at length today, and we thought you might be interested in what he has to say. First, the offending interview: The viewers included one Dana Nuccitelli, who works for a private Californian environment company and blogs at the Guardian. He objected to the Sunday Politics graph showing the absence of warming and said it should be 'should be totally disregarded and thrown out'. His conclusion: 'Throughout the show Neil focused only on the bits of evidence that seemed to support his position.

Andrew Neil’s interview of Michael Fallon on The Sunday Politics was a reminder of just how much of UK energy policy is determined by EU rules. When pressed on why there’s such a capacity crunch that there’s a risk of blackouts in the winter of 2015-16, Fallon explained that this was because a whole series of ‘dirtier’ plants are coming off-stream because of EU rules. If this wasn’t happening, there wouldn’t be a problem. Intriguingly, when asked ‘what’s more important obeying a Brussels directive or keeping the lights on?’ Fallon responded that ‘Keeping the lights on is the job of the government’. But he stressed that the government was ‘not planning to break any particular laws’.

Not that it’s a great surprise, but Liam Fox has come out as an out-er - i.e., he'd vote to leave the European Union if it cannot be reformed. He has hinted at this before, writing that the idea of leaving the EU “holds no terror” for him but on Sunday Politics he explicitly told Andrew Neil that he’d prefer independence to the status quo. Once, that would made Fox a minority voice but now it’s the mainstream position – and one shared, I suspect, by at least a dozen of his Cabinet colleagues who have no yet gone on the record. If you’re happy with Britain’s EU membership, you occupy a fringe position in British politics. And you want to keep the status quo, Fox said with a not-entirely-respectful chuckle, ‘vote Liberal Democrat’.

The Europe debate is raging in the Sunday papers ahead of Cameron’s speech on the matter. There’s mounting concern among Tory Cabinet Ministers that the speech will not go far enough and will simply inflame the situation. One told me, ‘It would be better to make no speech than to disappoint.

Chuka Umunna’s interview on The Sunday Politics today highlighted several of the problems facing the Labour party. When Andrew Neil pressed him on whether he could name any heads of big companies backing Labour, the shadow Business Secretary could only name a Labour peer who the party ennobled in 1998. Here’s the exchange: AN: Tony Blair said that Labour can’t go into the next election without the support of a single chief executive from a big company. Can you name the boss of a big major company who’s backing Labour? CU: The Chairman of ASOS who is Waheed Alli. He has backed the Labour Party. AN: Is that a public company on the FTSE? CU: I’m not sure that ASOS is listed. It may be or it may be just outside the FTSE 100. AN: Any others? Any others?

Tom Watson’s Twitter feed has gone a bit quiet recently. Strange, as he is normally quite vocal about media ethics and their failings. But his silence is well-judged: when he stood up in PMQs and referred to a 'a powerful pedophile network linked to Parliament and Number 10' and referred to 'senior aide of a former Prime Minister' he started a massive and tawdry guessing game, just as the Newsnight investigation did. And was his evidence any stronger? Harriet Harman has just been asked on BBC Sunday Politics, and she didn’t know.