01/06/2014 The Andrew Marr Show

The single best piece of writing in today's Sunday papers is a report by

the Observer's Robert McCrum about a farewell appearance - not the last,

I'm sure - by the great Clive James, poet, TV star and acerbic Aussie,

McCrum reminds his readers of some of the great Clive

Perrry Como - "a man giving an impression

of saying cheese and being shot in the back by a poisoned arrow."

"She was as good at playing abstract confusion in the same way that

And joining me today for our review of the Sunday newspapers, the former

chair of the Equalities Commission, Trevor Phillips, and the

After UKIP's triumph, has British politics changed

decisively, or is this just another protest bubble about to burst?

The UKIP leader celebrated poll success in his usual style but,

as he takes his band of 24 MEPs to Brussels and prepares

for next May's general election, voters may be asking, "Is this a

But apart from being anti-immigration and anti-Brussels,

I'll be talking to Nigel Farage about taxes, gay rights, housing,

And in his first major TV interview since those results, about where he

There was a time when the Lib Dems were seen as the insurgents.

Back then, Paddy Ashdown was their leader.

Hammered by the voters, has his party learned any lessons

Beyond politics, we've got two real radicals.

Originally a graphic artist and member of the Pythons.

Terry Gilliam is now a renowned artist,

Plus, the great Jimmy Wales, creator of Wikipedia,

who joins us as a major European crackdown on the web begins.

Lots to discover this morning but let's start with the news

An American soldier, who has been a prisoner of the Taliban for

Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl is the only US soldier to have been

He was released in exchange for five insurgents who were being

held at Guantanamo Bay and is now being taken to

My name is Bowe Bergdahl and I was born on March 20th, 1986.

For nearly five years, videos like this one released

by the Taliban were the only glimpse the world had of Bowe Bergdahl.

He was handed over to the US Special Forces in eastern Afghanistan

For his parents, a phone call from President Obama brought the news

We just can't communicate the words this morning when we heard

from the President, so we look forward to continuing the recovery

of our son, which is going to be a considerable task for our family.

For President Obama, it is a successful outcome

after some complex negotiations with the Taliban, mediated

As a parent, I can't imagine the hardship you have gone through.

I know I speak for all Americans when I say, we cannot wait

for the moment when you are reunited and your son is back in your arms.

In exchange, the US is releasing five senior Taliban fighters

They have been transferred to the custody of the Qatari government,

who say the men will not be allowed to return to fight in Afghanistan.

The yellow ribbons tied around Bowe's home in Idaho

as a reminder of the missing soldier were replaced with celebratory

balloons in anticipation of a very happy homecoming.

Football's world governing body FIFA is facing calls to re-run the

contest to host the 2022 World Cup, amid new allegations of corruption.

The Sunday Times suggests a former FIFA executive paid

football officials to ensure Qatar's bid was successful.

Similar claims in the past have been denied.

If the allegations prove to be true then clearly

I think it makes Sepp Blatter's position almost untenable.

He has known about these rumours for quite some time and apparently

It must beg the question as to whether or not we should rerun

the whole of the 2022 competition and see whether guitar generally

Police are investigating yesterday's accidents at a car rally

Three people were killed and one person is critically ill after

Another car taking part in the event had earlier hit five people,

A Christian woman, sentenced to death in Sudan

for refusing to convert to Islam, will be released within days

There's been growing condemnation of the treatment of Meriem Ibrahim,

who gave birth to her daughter in prison earlier this week.

A Sudanese Foreign Ministry official said the Government was

Employers who fail to pay the minimum wage to their workers

A bill in the Queen's Speech would make employers liable to

a penalty of ?20,000 for each member of staff they underpaid.

The Liberal Democrats and Conservatives are both claiming

I'll be back with the headlines just before 10am.

The Sunday Times has devoted considerable resources about

investigation into money and FIFA and why a small, hot,

non-footballing country has got the 2022 FIFA cake. The Sunday Telegraph

has a story about radical reforms. Something about eight the GT star

faces assault charges. -- a BGT. The Sunday Times investigation team

is back in its old form. This is British papers at its best. I also

notice it is on the front page of the Son. The results are extremely

concerning. Surely this means they can and must rerun the contest? Get

a Mac I do not know if they can. They have already started work on

building the stadiums. -- I do not know if they can. Fellow ministers

in the Cabinet will be looking at this, won't they? Undoubtedly. Good

comments have been made. There is quite a big problem in expecting

Sepp Blatter to deal with corruption. The biggest issue in

sport is money. Retirees have more and are prepared to spend more than

anybody else. They will spend anything to get this. ) I suggesting

money is corrupting football? This discovery has come late. -- are you

suggesting? Neither of the people you are featuring in the Observer of

Corinthians. One of the many stories about the after-shocks of the Nigel

Frodsham earthquake. A group of Labour MPs have now written to Ed

Miliband saying we have to attack, take account of UKIP and so on.

People have to hold their nerve on this. I do not think that is the

answer. There are only two political parties in the West who have been

successful on this question of immigration. They are both

centre-right parties. They are in government. Immigration has risen

under both those governments. The Germans have 437,000 net immigration

a year, twice what we have and the Canadians regularly quarter of a

million. Angela Merkel got re-elected. They both got re-elected

in the same year. Why? They took this issue one head-on and they

said, we are countries that need immigration. They won the argument.

They are both positive towards immigrants. The Canadians, in

Canada, a Tory Party, a lesson for your guys, the Tory Party is more

popular among immigrants than it is among the population in general. I

agree with so much of what you say. Different people have different

reasons for taking a view on immigration. There are certain parts

of the country where there has been a huge influx in people. If you do

not get the schools and the hospitals, people get fed up with

it. That is what the Canadians and the Germans have done

systematically. I think we have to take this on and be upfront about

it. Immigrants have played a hugely important role in our society. They

come over here overwhelmingly to work. They do not come here to

scrounge. There are far fewer immigrants claiming benefit than

people who have been born and bred in our country. We must have that

debate. When you make the case with people who see me in my constituency

surgery who say, I am really worried about immigration. We say, we do not

have a problem with immigrants. We explain all that to them and they

get it. Not all of them because some people are racist and have

prejudices. People do not know the arguments because that is the debate

we have not had. Can we get the UKIP earthquake into perspective? Full

credit, they won the European Union elections. They came top and they

beat my party and they beat the Labour Party. 90% of the people in

this country did not vote and certainly did not vote for UKIP and

so this so-called as quake represents less than 10% of the

public. The real story is that gentlemen there, Ed Miliband, and

his party. In areas like mine, frankly Labour should have done a

lot better. I was in my own constituency in Newark yesterday.

You hardly see Labour in Newark. Labour must get their act together.

Can I just ask you? Your party is still determined to have tens of

thousands of immigrants coming in. That looks like an impossible target

to many of us. We have reduced net migration. As I said earlier, it

does not look as if we will achieve it. That does not mean we are not

right in trying to achieve it and we have made that clear. The real

argument is making sure people understand the value of immigrants

in our country. We must make sure we do things properly. It would be

great if Anna were in charge. Unfortunately, that is not the

message we are getting from government. Let's move on to the

next story. It is about trams in Edinburgh. Al Athis is more

important. This is more important. I am delighted to hear this woman will

be set free. It is one of many stories that has concerned people

this week. She faces execution for no other reason than she is a

Christian. We have had the terrible case of the two girls who were raped

and then hanged and the stoning to death in Pakistan. I do not think

there was an increase, it is mainly misogynist. It is the fact the world

is waking up to it and governments must do something about it. There is

a war against women which is coming to light. We should be able to do

more about these issues. The General Assembly is apparently about to

elect Ugandan minister as its president. This is a guy who ushered

through legislation which essentially said in Uganda it is OK

to kill gay people. That must never happen. I hope our government... I

am on board -- be bored with an organisation called Kaleidoscope. --

I am on the board. This guy should not be able to show his face and I

hope the Government takes this to heart. Well said! Who do you have a

picture of? That is a great picture about who is going up in government.

Funnily enough, I wonder who this is. Anna and Esther. I'll tell you

what is great fun about this, hopefully for you and me. All of

these people have had their time in television. It says something about

modern politics. The successful people are people who can deal with

this medium. Nicky Morgan is sitting in the cabinet. There is no

photograph of her. I am really eager to get onto the story of Edinburgh

tram. At the moment there is a tram line going through my constituency,

which is a nightmare, but I don't have a problem with trams. As a form

of public transport we have had in Nottingham for many years, it brings

a modernity. They are very expensive. In Edinburgh, I don't

know what happened, but it has overrun on time and budget. In

Nottingham, they have nailed down the contractors so that for every

week it goes over, they have to pay extra money. Full credit to the

government forgiving astonishing levels of money to the

infrastructure, but if you are not careful it can destroy the economy

you are hoping to rebuild unless you do it absolutely right. And

alongside that there is a story about the boy who has gone missing

in Malaysia. Yes, I know that his mother has contacted the Prime

Minister about it. I certainly will not hesitate... I mean I can make

sure and I understand the boss watches this programme so he will

hear that and we will do everything we can. The family wants special

forces to be involved. I think what they really want is for the

Malaysian government to take it seriously and find out where he is.

Trevor. This is one of my favourites of the day. As one of the people who

piloted age discrimination legislation a few years back,

Richard Ingram, editor of the Oldie, says he has essentially had enough

of modern methods of management employed by his boss. He is leaving

the Oldie, and the editor goes grumpy, it says, because of young

men coming in. The editor sacked him for being grumpy. Any more stories

from either of you? No, the papers have been dominated by much of the

stuff we have already discussed, and that in itself is quite interesting.

Can we talk about this, don't go to hospital. One of the reasons why the

rates are higher at the weekend is because there are number of surgeons

who will take the more difficult cases who operated the weekends when

they can give more time, and that is one of the reasons that may explain

it. For now, we will see you both later on. Now to the weather

forecast. It is the 1st of June so it should be starting to feel

summery, and it is, but to find out what's in store lets go to Tomasz

Schafernaker. It is going to feel summary for the

1st of June, but by tomorrow it is all change and the weather will go

down the plug hole a little bit, to be honest. Look at that weather

across England and Wales and the east of Scotland, but this is the

beginning of the unsettled weather heading our way. If it is sunny

right now, you can get out there and enjoy the best of it. The cloud is

increasing over western areas as we speak, and a few spots of rain will

be moving into the western fringes of Scotland, Wales and the

south-west of England. In the east temperatures reaching 22 degrees.

Then overnight, rain and drizzle moving in. A very warm night, the

east probably stays dry. Then when you wake up, wet air, drizzle, then

towards the end of the day it looks like the sunshine will tease us once

again. Enjoy the sunshine today if you have it because it is all change

tomorrow. Should we have the right to erase

data we don't like Should we know how far surveillance

goes in our super high-tech world? Should companies like Google

be compelled to censor data? All these questions are hot topics

at the moment and are very much in the mind of one of the internet's

undisputed legends - Jimmy Wales. The American-born entrepreneur is

best known as the founder of the era-defining,

online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. Can I talk first about this new

European ruling meaning anyone can apply to have information about

themselves struck out of Google's search engines. That's right, and it

is quite broad in a way most people found surprising. One of them was a

link from Google to a newspaper story that was legally published,

still available online, so it is about true facts published in

newspapers that can no longer be linked by Google. In theory, if I am

a corrupt business person and I have had a series of convictions from the

past, I can apply to Google and say, I don't want anyone to know about

this any more, and a committee will have to decide the rules on which I

am successful or I fail. Basically I have joined this panel with Google

but it is not just about advising Google what to do, our view is to

have a broader remit to say, actually how can we change the law

to strike a better balancing between privacy and free speech so that we

don't have these clumsy cases in which we have to determine whether

they are legally allowed to link to a newspaper story or not. That is a

decision that should be left to the courts at best. A lot of people

don't like their own Wikipedia Internet site, is it possible to

apply for that to be removed? We are very open to corrections and people

who have concerns about their entry, but I just got a fantastically long

e-mail from somebody who has been complaining about their Wikipedia

entry for many years, a convicted fraudster. For us, we would not take

something like that down, but what is interesting is that maybe Google

will not be able to link to it. Do you think this is a moment in the

story of the Internet age which is a serious one? In other words we are

moving to a stage where governments are trying to grab power? Without

question. I've never seen something like this from Western democracies

generally. We have the same kind of rules that apply in China. Google is

not allowed to link to certain things in China. I believe the most

likely response from Google will be very transparent, I will encourage

them to be very transparent about what they are no longer linking to.

What is this going to do to the price of the Internet? If companies

are having to spend more time censoring and engaging in legal

battles, which seemed inevitable. It's not just a matter of the

Internet companies and the gusts associated with that, we also have

to be concerned about newspapers who now find it possible that Google

will not link to certain stories and they are going to have to go through

a legal process. We know that the newspapers are in financially dire

straits anyway so given the fragility of the free press, we

should stand back and take a look at this. Do you think this is

inevitable, trying to seize power over the Internet? No, because the

Internet is apparently global. When Google censors links to China, which

they used to do but don't do any more, they don't sense of the US

version. That is not going to happen. There are always areas and

many search engines around Europe who will not abide by these rules.

We are sitting here in the wake of the WikiLeaks saga, and Edward

Snowden's revelations. I think you regard Edward Snowden as a hero but

Julian Assange is less than that, why is that? History will tell us,

but I do think that Edward Snowden has been very good and very

principled in the things he has released. He seems to be deeply

concerned about the US Constitution and the propriety of the US

government in a way that Julian Assange has been more difficult for

people... Edward Snowden is in now this terrible position of being

asked to come back to be tried. I don't envy the position that he is

in. It is very difficult to know what the future holds for him.

British authorities say he has endangering lives of course. -- he

has endangered lives. That's right, and it is a very dangerous

assertion. I think it is time. As we think about what kind of

surveillance we want, we have to have some openness and transparency

so that the Government can make an informed decision about it. That

does mean that some of the things are going to be known but that is

the price of a free society. I read that you were annoyed by the word

Wiki forward to leaks and its association with Wikipedia. Yes, a

Wiki is something anybody can add to and can be created from all over the

world. And Jimmy Wales will be taking part

in a New Statesman Latitude debate on surveillance at King's College

London this Tuesday evening. It's been a tumultuous week

for the Lib Dems, digesting their awful elections

results, Nick Clegg appearing tired and emotional - in the true sense -

to defend his leadership. Then details seeping out

of an alleged ploy by Lord Oakeshott Vince Cable,

on the other side of the world And to cap it all, the case of Lord

Rennard and his behaviour towards How should Mr Clegg

deal with all this? I'm joined by his most experienced

and battle-hardened adviser, Paddy Ashdown to you, Andrew. These

were pretty awful results for the Lib Dems, you have been a steely

defender of Nick Clegg's leadership, so if the leadership is not going to

change, what short? I think the party should get out and start

campaigning for the next election. Let me put it to you this way. We

have come out of four years where we have been part of the Government of

our country because we believed it was in the interests of the country

to be part of that and provide a stable government. We have helped to

get this country out of the deepest economic recession of recent times,

we should be proud of that record. We never believed the mid-term

elections were going to be easy for us. They were more tough than we

expected but nobody expected any dividends from this. I have to say

that what happened after those elections has made a bad situation

worse. We now know there has been a plot of deep malice to try to remove

the leader. I have a very clear message for the party and that is,

anything you do now which is not getting out on the streets,

campaigning in the context of the next general election which is where

we can put our proposition about how we behaved in Government behind a

fine leader and I think a fine record, is a distraction and a

dangerous one. Stop it now. First of all, going back to what the voters

said, this was a European election and your leader went on television

with a debate against Nigel Farage and lost those debates. Are you

still absolutely the party of in? Wanting major changes. We have made

it very clear we are the party of in. Nick Clegg has managed to fill a

vacuum that no other politician dared to fill when arguing for

Europe. We do need to reform Europe. We need

to make a Democratic link. No one said it should not be reformed. It

seemed that Nigel Ferrari 's was talking about democracy and the lack

of democratic accountability and Nick Clack less so. How do you

address that? I do not think it is easy. I think Europe is the greatest

idea of our time. In a globalised world, with an -- with America

looking across the Atlantic and highly aggressive Russian president,

Europe pulling its sovereignty to work together in delivering to

citizens security for jobs, crime on the streets, it can only be done if

we work together on the international scene. It is the

greatest idea to come out of Europe in our time. There is a problem we

have not yet sold and that is, how do you create the European

democratic politics? How do you sorted that, you may have done

better. -- had you. We have to experiment. No one has got there

yet. Creating that is important. The answer is not to throw out the baby

with the bath water. I have to say, I cannot think of a more stupid

answer to a global problem which now confronts Europe in that we would

treat to the sovereignty of quarks floating behind other people 's

ocean liners. It is madness. This is in the face of huge economic powers.

Last week, Theresa May said they were looking at much tougher

immigration measures, including deporting people who could not get

jobs. Would the Liberal Democrats drop that? Immigration is intensely

valuable to Britain. I think the figures the other day from the

Office for Budget Responsibility said 250,000 immigrants increased

GDP by something like 40%. We have 40,000 immigrant doctors in the NHS.

It would not work. We have benefited hugely from immigration. We have had

4 million people coming in over the last years and has radically change

the nature of many communities are many people feel upset about it and

uneasy about it. Where has it happened most? Answer, London. It

has benefited hugely from the fact it is an international community.

Where did UKIP to least well? London. Those that argue there

should be some isolationist policy have had least effect in the area of

our country which is most multicultural and multiethnic. The

Conservatives want to bring in the new immigration measures and we have

been told about them. Do you think your party will block those? I would

say unlikely but let's have a look. I might be that we will not block

them and let those go through. But let's have a look. I'm not prepared

to say I would condemn a series of legislation unless I see it. What

needs to be preserved, which is at the heart of Europe and our

prosperity which springs out of Europe, is the free movement of

goods and the free movement of people. I am prepared to see any

reform at the process of immigration. If you want to bring in

things which access -- which limit access to welfare, let me say this,

if we part company with our primary partners in Europe, we will have

less influence in the world, less ability to create jobs, less crime

free streets, all of the things I want the British citizen to have our

better delivered by working with our friends in Europe. Let's talk about

the plot of the malice. That involves more than one person. How

many people do you think were involved? Is Vince Cable part of

this? You have to accept it at its face value. You promised to remove

the head of Matthew Oakeshott and various parts of his anatomy that I

cannot talk about. Do you wish you had torn his balls off? I said, you

are famous for making difficult days of party more difficult. I said if

you do that after May the 23rd, I will remove your head and then your

testicles. He dashed off to the press and said, Paddy Ashdown is

being nasty to me. He is a member of the special forces and maybe he can

really do this. He knows a metaphor when he sees it. He did do precisely

what I thought. I do not have to do anything for Matthew Oakeshott

because I think the party has done it for him. He has been very closely

tied for many years to Vince Cable, who was out of the country when all

of this happened. You really saying you have no worries about the role

of Vince Cable in theirs? One of the rules of politics is choose your

yardage carefully. Let's talk about your book about the resistance in

France. It's an account of people who very bravely. They attacked the

Germans on D-day and then they were betrayed, won't they? I think they

were abandoned, more than betrayed, in truth. In many ways, the book I

have written has taken me three and a half years. It is the hidden story

of D-day. We know the position of almost every soldier on the beaches

of D-day. We know nothing about the French, who were told to rise at

10am on the 5th of June 70 years ago. The BBC in London sent out 180

messages to resistance movements all over France. They all meant the same

thing. D-day is tomorrow, your liberation is at hand, rise and

fight. Eisenhower made the crucial decision. The original plan was to

raise resistance behind the norm and fight. Eisenhower made the crucial

decision. The original plan was to raise resistance behind the norm in

daily beaches. The whole of France had to rise. -- Normandie flight. He

knew he could not protect the resistance units in the south. He

had to do it because he was nervous that unless he kept the Germans

guessing about the simultaneous seven innovation he could not

succeed. I dedicate the book to the boy in the white shirt who fought

the Germans with Bren guns, sometimes in the shirt they had left

home in only hours before. They are quite as much casualties and

contributors as the troops on the beaches. This book is about what

happens when a war becomes a civil war and is in the villages and towns

that it is being fought, like Syria. There are modern resonances.

Absolutely. When I was in the special forces, we used to have a

phrase, big thumbs on the floor maps, that is the way to kill the

charts. Whenever you have politicians who do not properly

understand the consequences of the soldiers on the frontline by the

decisions they take, you have tragedy on a grand scale. The story

is full of betrayal, treachery, bad decisions and bad understandings by

French generals and indeed by de Gaulle and arguably by Churchill.

The people who paid the price for that the little man and the little

boy in the shirt. He came up onto the plateau, bursting with, to help

liberate his country and was sacrificed. Thank you very very much

indeed for coming in to join us. Of all the Monty Pythons who went

on to varied careers, none has enjoyed quite as colourful

a career as Terry Gilliam. The man behind the artwork that

helped give The Flying Circus its absurdist identity,

Gilliam became one of Hollywood's He was responsible for some

of the finest comedies and dramas Films like Brazil, The Fisher King,

12 Monkeys, In recent years he's turned to

directing operas to great acclaim. His latest production of one

of Berlioz's most challenging works is about to open at the

English National Opera. This opera is about an extraordinary

Italian goldsmith, diarist and Bradman in the late Renaissance. It

is said to be one of the hardest operas to put on anywhere. I do not

know but I am learning, slowly. It has huge cast. Strangely, I

criticised it in the way people criticise my work which is too many

ideas. Someone should get in there and cut it down in size. We have

tried. It is very compensated. We have made it even more complicated.

We have got giant statues. We have an even Bigger Road to beat with.

We have got giant statues. We have Trying to set it into the 19th

century world, almost like a mining community on one hand, mixed with

London, mixed with Italy. A lot of ideas all come crashing together. I

think you said, doing this might kill me. Tommy about the pressures?

Right now, I am diseased. We do our first and only dress rehearsal on

Monday and then we will open. I have been thinking about it for a couple

of years. I was fuelled into it because I read an autobiography and

they wanted to make a film about it. -- lured. He creates murder, he does

not get away with it. I got caught up in that tale. I did Faust a

couple of years ago. There seemed to be potential disaster to avoid.

After these films, which seem to be intensely political, what is the

attraction of opera? People have been trying to get me for 25 years

to do opera and I have always avoided it because I have been doing

films. Now I am reaching the autumn years of My Life, I am teaching

myself some new tricks. That is why get you into it. I do think there is

a quality in opera like doing cartoons. My effort is to try to

make them real people, rather than opera people. I hate that. Last week

I said, try singing not like that but put your hands in your pocket

and see if you can still doing it -- still do it. You're going back to

the pipe and is reunion. You said you hope that it would have been

cancelled. It was only because of the pressure and I was trying to do

another film. I would be very selfish and think, if only I did not

have to do the Pythons. The danger is, all of you guys like you more

than the rest, have been hugely successful in later life. You have

become the establishment you started out satirising. How will you feel?

We will feel young again. We are young, scampi characters. It will go

back to being how it was then. The minute the light comes on and we

start doing the material, it is like time has stood still and we never

left it. A couple of months ago, it was like nothing had changed. What

have I done in those intervening years? I had been transported and

everything subsequently had never occurred. What about your own

politics? You came over to Britain, what are your politics? Are you an

anarchist in your heart? In the last election, even though I did not

agree with Nigel Raj, someone who gets out and says things, things

that politicians are frightened to say, it is a bad thing. Everybody is

tiptoeing nobody wants to put a foot wrong. It will used against them. We

have him on right now. Thank you for leading into him so effortlessly.

And for those of you who can't make it to the ENO in London for a bit

of Berlioz, Benvenuto Cellini is being broadcast live to over 400

cinemas around the UK and Ireland on Tuesday 17th June.

"The UKIP fox is in the Westminster henhouse" -

Nigel Farage's typically colourful response to the recent local and

European elections results is not quite true, because UKIP doesn't

But that's of course their aim with the general

election in less than a year away and by-elections in between.

Are you confident you can go on and claim the clutch of MPs in the House

of Commons, sufficient perhaps to have real influence? Yes, I am. I

think the European election results caught the news but the more

significant news for next year was that in the areas that we succeeded

last year, where there were district council elections there as well,

this year we are seeing areas where we are building up a good

representation of UKIP and that changes the whole perception in the

constituency. This is exactly what Paddy Ashdown did in the 1990s, they

build on local strengths. So our strategy for the general election

next year is that we will pick over the course of the summer our target

seats and throw the kitchen sink at them. And do you know how many of

those seats there will be? Not yet, but something like two dozen, three

dozen, something where we can say to the electorate that we are winning

council seats, we are the challenger here. We are in a strange position

the moment with the polls, it doesn't yet seem that anybody is in

a commanding position to have the overall majority at the next

election which means that a party like yours, possibly with others,

could have real influence so we need to know much more about your

policies that go beyond immigration. That is fair enough. I have tried to

fight the European elections on European issues. I know that nobody

else wanted to talk about this stuff, but that is over and I accept

that fully. We are going to have our annual conference this year in

Doncaster, in Ed Miliband's constituency, and that is where we

will lay out our manifesto. For those wanting a sense of where you

are, you have always praised Margaret Thatcher hugely, are you

essentially going to be a Thatcherite party? No, because that

was of its time for two years ago to deal with a specific set of

problems. It benefited half the country, for the other half it

didn't. But it has had enduring policy ideas like lower tax and

grammar schools. All of which have now gone. Do you want to bring them

back? I want us to give millions of families the opportunity to give a

better life -- to live a better life, because at the moment we are

seeing the gap between the wealthy and the rest getting wider, and

seeing the working population working longer hours having suffered

huge wage compression with their household bills rising. We want a

genuinely address the cost of living and address social mobility. You

have been with UKIP since the beginning and one of its policies

has been a flat rate of tax of 31%, is that still a policy? No, we are

going to rethink the tax thing. I think that was badly explained

because people thought, gosh, they are going to increase tax for the

lower paid. I can tell you for certain our biggest tax objective

will be no tax on the minimum wage. We have got to incentivise people to

get back to work. That obviously will cost money. Does that mean you

cannot promised tax cuts to the better off for instance? I think the

top rate of tax in this country of around 40% is the one that will

bring the most revenue into the Exchequer. 40% top rate of tax. I

think that is what we will conclude, yes. Anything over 40 and

you start to see people going overseas. We have got to worry about

the millions of people on low pay, frankly without sufficient

incentives to be in work. A grammar school in every town? Absolutely.

The lack of social mobility in Britain is frankly quite shaming and

I think selective education is one of the ways to give bright kids from

poor backgrounds a real opportunity. You have set the welfare state is

too big in the past, getting a smaller is difficult for any

government. What are your ideas? Since 1997 there has been a boom in

the public sector in this country for middle managers and above. Vast

numbers of people throughout local for middle managers and above. Vast

numbers of people government and the health service and elsewhere burning

6-figure salaries. There is no question the Labour Party increased

our spending on public services but we finished up actually without

better delivery and we finished up with a whole new layer and class of

public servants who have done well. So you want a chainsaw through

middle management. I think that's exactly what we need. Recently my

mother was in hospital for one month in a London hospital, and I looked

at the nurses and doctors working, and thought, actually they are being

given way to much to do. You have said you are going to put a ring

fence around the NHS, you are going to remove the ring fence around the

NHS and therefore spend less. Not necessarily. Clearly we have got to

re-prioritise what the NHS doors. Seeing the stuff seriously

undermanned whilst at the same time vast sums of money being paid back

on PFI deals and the growth in middle management. The Conservatives

say that you are offering something for nothing, lower taxes, milk and

honey, and it doesn't add up. The Conservatives' sums don't add up

because they said the budget deficit would be back to even Stevens and we

are still borrowing ?100 billion per year more than we are earning so I

don't think criticism from them is particularly good but we have two

outline where savings can be made. What about those people who might be

watching and say, yes I agree with that, or I am gay or I have brown

skin and I don't feel comfortable with these people? I have had too

many whistles from UKIP candidates and I don't feel comfortable... We

posed a big threat to three established parties and they clubbed

together and did everything they could to throw mud at us and abuse

us. You gave them a lot of mud to throw. I don't think we did. During

that campaign there were 17 liberal, Labour and Conservative councillors

arrested during the campaign and yet that didn't make the news. We had a

rally in London and I invited the black and ethnic minority candidates

standing for UKIP to come and join me on the stage, and there was the

most incredible atmosphere and feeling of togetherness. What about

gay people? And that here is a party that represents and believes in the

Commonwealth. We have more black and ethnic minority voters now than the

Conservative party and that message didn't get out. What about gay

people? We have just had a gay person elected as one of our MEPs, I

think that answers your question. This attempt to paint UKIP as a

party that is deeply intolerant of the world does not bear the truth.

You now have to go into Europe and your MEPs will have to behave

differently then your MEPs from the last Parliament. I couldn't agree

more. Will you be trying to change things, turning up for the votes...

Of course we are going to be there, taking part in votes and we will

have some members actively involved in committees but we are not going

to deceive the British public that anything can be changed. I went to a

meeting on Tuesday, Mr Schultz in the chair, one of the runners and

riders to be commission president, and the leaders of the Christian

Democrats, the leaders of all of the big political families in Europe

represented in that room and it is clear to me that whatever results we

saw, it is business as usual. Why are you not going into alliance with

the French National front? I don't want to, they come from a different

political family. Whilst Marine Le Pen has taken a different political

position to her father, I think it still has him in it, and we want

nothing to do with that party. What you are going to live with parties

from Italy and elsewhere, you hope? Yes, I met one last week, a former

comedian... Two of them! That photo of you, you must stop doing that.

That's right, I should have no opinions... It is not going to

happen. Your wife says she is worried about the smoking and the

lack of sleep. What wife doesn't worry. But I am hoping we can do a

deal and our group will sit in the middle of that parliament with a

strong Eurosceptic agenda. We have always assumed you would stand in

Kent but there has been a malicious suggestion you might stand in

Sheffield against Nick Clegg, any chance of that? Anything is

possible. No, I am going to stand in the south-east of England because

that is where I am from. I think one of the things voters don't like

about political parties is the way candidates are parachuted in. And

its south? It is a possibility. Thank you. Now the news headlines.

The former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown has told this programme

there was a plot of deep malice against the Deputy Prime Minister,

Nick Clegg, in the wake of the recent elections.

He said his party would continue to campaign positively for the UK's

membership of the EU and suggested it was unlikely the Lib Dems would

support tougher measures against EU migration, being considered by the

Home Secretary. The UKIP leader says that he expects

his party to identify two to three dozen target seats at the next

general election, where it believes it has a strong chance of getting

its candidates elected to Westminster. He said that UKIP would

lay out its full manifesto at its autumn conference in Doncaster, and

indicated it would take people earning the minimum wage out of

income tax and reduce the top rate of tax to 40p in the pound.

An American soldier who has been a prisoner of the Taliban for nearly

five years has been freed. Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl is the only US soldier

to have been held captive in Afghanistan, and was released in

exchange for five insurgents being held at Guantanamo Bay. He will now

be taken to a military hospital in Germany.

The next news on BBC One is at one o'clock.

Back to Andrew. Nigel Farage, Anna Soubry and Trevor Phillips are all

here on the notorious sofa. Rainbow alliance. Trevor, are you worried

about the things you could have been saying? I was worried about one

thing that Nigel said this morning, that you have more minority voters

than the Conservatives, that is fantasy. They were the opinion polls

the other day for the European elections.

I will do some number crunching and send it to you. I am worried about

what some of the conversation that UKIP has provoked. I am not going to

say they are racist, you have probably got racists in the party

but so has every party, but I think some problems are rising, the use of

the epithet racist to cover behaviour that goes from being

disobliging about Mexicans through to some of the things that political

parties say about immigration is, right across to Street murders, I

think it is depriving the word of its moral force and I do worry about

the debate being conducted in that way. We came to a point in the last

fortnight of that campaign where we made the argument that it is

irresponsible to have a total open door for 485 million people to live

in Britain and we should have controlled immigration, and that in

itself became deemed to be racist. I think the danger is that it stirs up

feelings which I certainly find deeply offensive and very troubling,

and I see it on the doorstep in my own constituency and when I go into

others as well. People say things that I don't think represents this

country. The counterargument is, should we have an open door... I'm

sorry, we have run out of time. All sorts to entertain and inform,

including the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, and

the great Scottish singer songwriter Eddi Reader will be playing

for us right here in the studio. as Britain's museums open up...

at night. Join us as we celebrate our

ever-changing museums and galleries