Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna has withdrawn from the Labour party leadership contest, he has announced. (Press Association)

Politics hack Iain Martin isn't happy about Nicola Sturgeon's interior design it appears.

In a thinly veiled threat to one senior member of UKIP - Douglas Carswell perhaps? -  Mr Farage has this to say:

Nigel Farage has warned UKIP members to make their mind up as to whether they want to stay with the party or leave.

He says: "Two or three people need to make their minds up. Are their futures in UKIP or aren’t they?

"What is clear is the sheer level of support for me within UKIP…frankly it’s astonishing.  And to read the ludicrous headlines in some of today’s newspapers makes you realise that actually this is about a Conservative attempt and a Conservative lobby to try to destabilise UKIP and to use one or two people within who are disaffected.

"The NEC unanimously supports me, the leader of the MEP group supports me, the leader of the House of Lords group supports me. I have had every single major donor, all of our biggest donors ever in the history of UKIP all publicly came out yesterday. It’s very difficult to get more support than I have got. Even Patrick O’Flynn who made some personal comments that weren’t particularly pleasant said he 100% supports me as leader."

Image source, AP

...that's according to the editor of the Spectator, Fraser Nelson, writing in the Daily Telegraph, external today.

He says when Douglas Carswell defected to UKIP, he bet that the party was here to stay. He didn’t think he was deserting conservatism when he joined UKIP; on the contrary, he was hoping to refresh it, Mr Nelson writes.

If the challenge was strong enough, the Tories would evolve and the Right would be reunited. He scented a revolution, which could bring a dozen or more UKIP MPs. He wanted to be the first.

But Nigel Farage now senses a chance to supplant Labour as the party of the working class, according to Mr Nelson, and that is one of the reasons for the infighting. 

Robin Brant
Political Correspondent

Nigel Farage has almost certainly seen off the (anonymous) calls for a leadership election, so he is staying on. But it's come at a big price. He's been forced to jettison his two closest advisors and side with Douglas Carswell in rejecting £650,000 in public money the party is due. 

It's clear some senior figures think he - and the party - needs a break. Steven Woolfe MEP told the BBC Nigel Farage should take the summer off, and his deputy Paul Nuttall should step up. (Intriguingly it wasn't Nuttall whom Farage anointed as his favoured successor when he initially stood down last week). He also sided with critics who attacked the "aggressive" approach of the leader during the election: "the tone slipped" he conceded. Farage stays, but at a price.

... and we haven't even had the Queen's Speech yet!

According to the Hull Daily Mail, , externalprominent Tory Eurosceptic, and let's not forget David Cameron's leadership rival 10 years ago - yes it really has been THAT long - David Davis, has threatened to oppose the government's plans to scrap the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights.

Mr Davis told his local newspaper:

Just in case you were wondering who Nigel Farage's former chief of staff was. Here's a handy little picture of him from St George's Day.

Image source, PA

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

Responding to criticism that UKIP was being dragged to the right by elements that were inspired by the Tea Party movement in the US, Mr Woolfe tells Today UKIP is “not a right wing party”.

“We never were. We are the party that said no one on minimum wage should have to pay taxation. We are the party that said we would put £3bn into the NHS and we actually provided the ways of funding that."

Mr Woolfe says:

Labour's Anne Begg, who lost her Aberdeen South seat to the SNP, is realising what it means to no longer be an MP.

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

The National Executive Committee (NEC) should have respected Mr Farage’s views in wanting to take some time off, Mr Woolfe says.

"I understand their [the NEC’s] enthusiasm to want to support him at that time," he says. But at the same time UKIP have more than capable people to take the leadership on," he adds. That would have allowed Mr Farage to take the summer off and then come back with renewed enthusiasm and energy.

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

Steven Woolfe UKIP MEP and the party’s immigration spokesman says debates about whether Nigel Farage should stay as leader "are kind of irrelevant now". 

He says “of course" he wants Mr Farage to stay as leader. 

He adds it would be a great shame if the party didn’t have Mr Farage as leader going into the EU referendum campaign.

Mr Woolfe  says the current debate about whether Mr Farage should step down, taken a break and then run in a leadership election stems from the fact that the UKIP leader has not had a holiday. 

He says anyone who knows Mr Farage and how hard he works for the party should have known that when he said he needed a rest he meant it and the party should have respected those views and given him the chance to recharge and come back in September.

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

Mr Swinney is also baffled by David Cameron's appointment of Andrew Dunlop - a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher at the time of the Poll Tax - to the Scotland office.

He says it is a “scandalous appointment “.

“The Conservatives have just commanded their worst level of support in Scotland for over 100 years,” he says, and have just one MP in Scotland.

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

Image source, PA

Scottish Deputy First Minister John Swinney, tells Today the Smith Commission should be implemented "in spirit and in substance". 

He says the proposals brought forward by Alistair Carmichael in the last parliament didn't go far enough to do that. He also points out that a committee of MSPs from all parties found the government's commitments were not proposed in the way that Smith envisaged.

He says: "We said in the election there was nothing about the election and nothing about the outcome that would bring about a second referendum... and that we’re not planning to bring forward a second referendum… despite the fact that it [the general election] delivered the most colossal electoral mandate for the Scottish National Party. There is nothing that we take from that that brings forward the argument for a second referendum."

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

Alistair Carmichael says he is in the market for a discussion that respects last year’s referendum decision.

But he warns:

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

Nicola Sturgeon has to come forward and say what it is that she actually wants, former Scottish secretary and Scotland's only Lib Dem MP Alistair Carmichael tells Today ahead of the Scottish first minister’s meeting with the prime minister later.

The "shopping list" that the Scottish National Party (SNP) came up with on Thursday, which included control over business taxes and the minimum wage, are all things that are "absolutely central to the single market that is the United Kingdom", he says. 

That was something the people of Scotland quite emphatically said last year that they wanted to remain part of, he adds.

Image source, BBC screen grab

If you missed Nigel Farage's turn on Question Time, you can watch a clip in our UKIP story here.

On the programme he was asked about the comments made to a newspaper by Patrick O'Flynn, the party's economic spokesman, suggesting he was turning UKIP into a "personality cult" and becoming a "snarling, thin-skinned, aggressive" man.

His response: "I was disappointed that a member of our team said this, but look, general elections you're under a huge amount of pressure and particularly it's like a boiler room, a pressure cooker. 

"The election's over, people are letting off steam, and we've seen one or two people fighting personal wars against each other." 

And asked if he now accepted it would be the wrong time to step down, he said: "The level of support for me in the party is phenomenal and, frankly, to go through a leadership contest at a time when [David] Cameron says he's renegotiating our relationship with the European Union (EU) would be a massive, massive mistake."

Our political correspondent Sean Curran called it a "confident" performance, saying Mr Farage looked determined to hang on as leader until the EU referendum, which he thinks will be this time next year.