Ukip to have its own EU Brexit campaign

UKIP will hold its own campaign to persuade voters that Britain needs to leave the European Union, Nigel Farage has revealed.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage addresses supporters and the media on a bridge overlooking the Severn Tolls on the M4. Picture: PA

The Ukip leader has said his party’s members can get involved in a cross-party campaign but it will not be officially involved with the Brexit campaign being prepared by other parties.

The move comes as Mr Farage hopes momentum created by the EU campaign will also help his party win at the polls, with the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and English council elections next year just a few weeks before many people believe Prime Minister David Cameron will hold the referendum in June.

Critics have warned that the Ukip leader is too divisive to act as a figurehead for the official No campaign.

And Mr Farage declined to say who he would like to see as campaign leader, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I haven’t got a clue at this stage ... This referendum may be some way off, it may well be somebody we haven’t even considered, somebody from the world of entertainment or business who has never been in politics at all.”

Mr Farage - who is expected to launch the Ukip campaign on Friday - said his party’s activists were “raring to go” to counter the efforts of pro-Europeans like Tony Blair, Lord Mandelson and Sir Richard Branson, who have already been making the case for continued EU membership.

He said that people who have voted for Ukip over the past few years could deliver 60 per cent of the vote needed to win the referendum for No.