It appears the Lib Dem campaign bus has broken down for the second day in a row.

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Is Harriet Harman expecting to become deputy PM after the general election if Labour are victorious? “I’m shadow deputy prime minister, but we’re not taking the election for granted, we’re not measuring up the curtains in Downing Street,” she says. That is a carbon copy of Ed Miliband’s own comment about Ms Harman’s future on Woman’s Hour earlier. He praised her abilities - but stopped short of guaranteeing her a job.

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One of the big policies from Labour’s women’s manifesto, which is being launched today, is the idea that working grandparents could share parental leave. “The reality is… grandparents are a really important part of looking after grandchildren,” she tells the News Channel. Whereas before the grandmother might have been retired, now she’s often working. “This is what families are doing… and we want to back them up in that.” She points out that parents may prefer children to "chill out with the grandparents" during the school summer holiday, rather than go to a play scheme, and this policy would help with that.

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Harriet Harman says she doesn’t have any regrets about the colour of her party’s pink bus. Nine million women didn’t vote at the last election, she says, so “it’s worth really pointing out to women and reminding them that we’re really listening to their concerns”.

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So far this year as many as 1,000 migrants may have died trying to get to Europe on unsafe rafts. The UN refugee agency says not enough is being done to save their lives, while Doctors Without Frontiers has accused Europe of “turning its back” on people fleeing humanitarian disasters. Now the Green Party has called for action, too.

“Britain should immediately pledge funding to help with the search and rescue operation in the Mediterranean,” leader Natalie Bennett says. “We cannot simply stand by while hundreds of people drown in our continent’s seas. The charities saving people’s lives in the Mediterranean must be properly resourced, and Britain must help with this.” The Greens want the government to go beyond the migrant crisis, too, by offering to take more refugees from wartorn countries like Syria.

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In contrast to the UKIP manifesto in 2010, which Nigel Farage himself said was “drivel”, this has really tried to look coherent, thought-out, well-costed and plausible. There are many people who are thinking about voting UKIP who want to know what the party will do beyond getting out of the European Union. This is an effort by Nigel Farage’s party to look like a serious proposition to the electorate.

The Daily Telegraph

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The Conservatives’ policy push today is their seven-point plan for home ownership, but there isn’t much there that we haven’t heard before. Or, indeed, yesterday. An alternative Tory policy story might be Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s announcement that petty criminals will face a “short, sharp” punishment. A couple of nights in a police cell awaits for persistent vandals, shoplifters and drug addicts if the Tories get in, the Telegraph reports, external.

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Reminds us of that famous ice cream photo with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - without the undercurrent of tension of course...

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And now Nicola Sturgeon is on the News Channel, where she’s rebutting UKIP’s manifesto call for a shake-up of the Barnett formula. Scotland, she points out, contributes more tax per head than the rest of the UK population, so she doesn’t see a case for reform. That would change if Scotland were to get full fiscal autonomy as the SNP wishes, though. Doing so would enable Scotland under the SNP to slow the pace of deficit reduction. “We offer an alternative to austerity – we don’t think our public services, our economy and the most vulnerable in our society can afford more years of even deeper austerity,” the Scottish first minister says.

BBC Radio 4

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Nicola Sturgeon follows Jim Murphy on Radio 4. She says the SNP will seek to build “progressive alliances” on a number of issues – and voices the hope that scrapping Britain’s nuclear weapons programme Trident is something that could find support from Labour backbenchers. “I know that on Trident there would be support among Labour’s ranks for the position of the SNP,” she says. It's just two days since 34 protesters were arrested after a demonstration at the Faslane Naval Base in Scotland.

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Jim Murphy insists that he hopes the polls will turn around once the “campaign proper” starts after the Scottish parties’ manifestos are released. “David Cameron can’t win here in Scotland – he needs someone here to beat the Labour Party for him. And in this election the SNP are David Cameron’s enthusiastic helpers,” he says. Mr Murphy has been under pressure over the suggestion that Labour’s commitment to reducing the deficit in every year of the next parliament doesn’t fit well with his approach. “Everybody north or south of the border wants a government that will balance the books,” he insists. “The argument is over what’s the fairer way of balancing the books.”

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Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy has been interviewed on The World At One:

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Green leader Natalie Bennett has been giving her take on today’s manifesto launches. The Liberal Democrats were “supposed to be part of the greenest government ever, a phrase that has become a sad, sick joke”, she says. As a result she thinks their green pledges won’t be taken seriously. As for UKIP, Ms Bennett says they have “led a race to the bottom on immigration rhetoric”. The Greens, she insists, are standing up for migrants.

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UKIP's leader has been challenged to a duel in London's Hyde Park by a Polish prince brandishing a sabre. Yanek Zlinski claimed Polish people suffered, and feared, violence in the UK, which he blamed on Nigel Farage's party, prompting him to make a video with claims about discrimination. But UKIP's Patrick O'Flynn said the claims were "absolute rubbish" and his party blamed a "broken immigration system" and not the migrants. Watch their Daily Politics interview with Andrew Neil

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Labour hopeful Tom Harris also spoke on The World at One about the bigger picture in Scotland, saying he was “genuinely confused” by the polls indicating substantial support for the nationalist cause. “I really don’t know what’s motivating people to move in such large numbers, if the polls are correct, to the SNP,” he adds. “Independence is now behind us, the referendum’s behind us – we should be concentrating on deciding who we want to govern us over the next five years.”

BBC Radio 4

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Tom Harris, the Labour candidate defending his seat in Glasgow South, says his party leader Ed Miliband is a “bit of a geek”. But he does so with the air of one conceding something everyone knows. Mr Harris himself voted for David Miliband in 2010, but he sees progress now on the doorstep. “People are raising an approving eyebrow when the papers talk about all his previous girlfriends,” he tells The World At One. “He’s going down pretty well, compared to how he’s gone down in the past.”

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