Ukip leader ‘proud’ Gove and Johnson used his party’s slogans to back Brexit, as he deflects critics in last referendum push

Nigel Farage has mounted an attempt to claim all the political credit if the UK votes to leave the EU, declaring the leave campaign has stolen Ukip’s slogans and policies.

The Ukip leader said it was his party’s referendum, given that he had “forced” David Cameron to take the issue seriously because voters had been turning to his party.

In his final speech of the campaign Farage claimed 100% of the credit for having “forced” the government to the poll, highlighting the Ukip slogans, policies and language now openly used by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. These included the Ukip slogan from the general election, Believe in Britain, as well as the branding of Thursday as the UK’s independence day, and the flagging up of the Australian-style points system, of loving Europe but hating the EU, and the arguments about continuing to enjoy German cars and French wine in the event of a Brexit.

“I say with some pride, this would never have happened without Ukip. It is, in many ways, our referendum,” Farage said, pointing out that he had fought for this moment for decades.

The official leave campaign has been desperately trying to distance itself from Ukip, viewing Farage as an electoral liability rather than asset. This intensified last week after Ukip released a poster showing migrants crossing a European border with the slogan Breaking Point, which remain campaigners likened to Nazi propaganda. However, defiantly, Farage said he would only apologise for the timing of the launch, which had coincided with the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox.

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He also deflected accusations of racism and xenophobia, saying people should instead be criticising a poster published by Operation Black Vote showing a white skinhead shouting at an elderly Asian woman that said everyone’s vote was worth the same. “The one poster that no one seems to talk about, the one really offensive and abusive poster in this campaign, was put out by an organisation encouraging people from the ethnic minorities to vote, showing a skinhead menacing an elderly Asian lady. And that was an absolute disgrace,” he said.

The Ukip leader also made a pitch to non-voters to break the habit of a lifetime and cast their ballot, choosing the leave option, predicting this would lead to a Brexit victory.

He suggested that Ukip supporters would “crawl over glass” to get to the ballot booths on Thursday but that the campaign needed those who had not been politically engaged before to win the referendum.

He said: “This referendum is a really about something, this referendum is the people versus the establishment. It is the vested interest, it’s the rich, it’s the big business, it’s those who are doing very nicely thank you against pretty much everybody else.

“We can do better than this. Tomorrow we can vote for real change, tomorrow we can vote to put power back in the hands of people, we can vote to take control of our country back, we can vote to get our borders back, we can vote to get our pride and self-respect as a nation and who we are as a people, back.”

He said, as he waved a British passport aloft for what he promised would be the last time during the campaign, that voting to leave would allow the UK to become “democratic” and a “normal country” again.

Asked about his plans after the vote Farage declined to speculate about whether he would stay as Ukip leader, saying only that he would have a hearty breakfast on Friday. If the UK voted for Brexit, he said, he “doubted it very much” that politicians would give him a peerage or statue in gratitude – but he would want to “stick around” in Brussels as an MEP to make sure the negotiations were on track.