Douglas Carswell let slip more than he probably should have last night when asked if Nigel Farage had no input into his party’s manifesto. “If only,” Carswell quipped back.

QT audience member “I’d like to know how much input Nigel Farage actually had into the UKIP manifesto…”

Dimbleby “You think he just accepted what others have written for him? Douglas Carswell?”

Carswell “If only.“

In fact it was put together by a team under the hugely impressive Suzanne Evans, the UKIP deputy chairwoman who was the primary author:

Tim Aker stood down from producing the manifesto – he was too busy getting elected as a councillor in Thurrock and an MEP, with a good chance of also becoming an MP – all within an astonishing year. In the past UKIP’s policies have been fairly mocked as made up on the back of a fag packet and disowned as drivel by Nigel Farage himself, this time they have been stress tested by a team of economists. It shows in that days later the manifesto has not unraveled…