The Guardian’s Helen Pidd has filed a dispatch on Nigel Farage’s return to the north-east this evening as he comes to the end of his We Want Our Country Back tour.

He’s at the Sage in Gateshead: a magnificent silver shimmering building paid for with millions of EU development funding.

Around 500 people have opted to miss the England match in order to listen to the Ukip leader do one of his final public appearances before Thursday’s referendum.

The event began with Farage observing a minute’s silence in memory of Jo Cox, along with Labour MP Kate Hoey and Tory MP David Davis.

He then returned to the stage to the tune of the Final Countdown and men bellowing “Nigel for PM!” to deliver a riposte to those who have suggested his campaign may have somehow influenced Cox’s murderer, Thomas Mair.

He said: “There are one or two in the Remain camp, their spin doctor [Will Straw] being foremost among them, but also some of their speakers, who have tried to say that the motives of that man were somehow whipped up or inspired by a leave campaign that had fought on a nasty, negative and hateful agenda.

“I want to say: that man, who had his own mental health issues, that man acted in isolation. What that man did was an act of barbarism and every one of us who will go out to vote to Leave condemns utterly what he did.

“Some have tried to demonise me or others to say we’ve upped the rhetoric. Compared to the Scottish referendum we have done no such thing. All we’ve done is ask for sensible, balanced, controlled immigration so that we can have the right number of people to come to our country and benefit our society and we know we can’t do that in the European Union.”