Nigel Farage: UKIP 'to get cracking' on EU referendum

UKIP can "fight the ground game" and play an important part in the campaign against the UK's membership of the EU, party leader Nigel Farage has said.

Ahead of a party conference in Eastbourne, he said UKIP would "get cracking" with the "no" campaign.

He told the BBC that from the autumn UKIP would be "holding bid public meetings, putting leaflets through doors and campaigning".

The in/out referendum on the UK's EU membership will take place by 2017.

Prime Minister David Cameron wants to renegotiate the terms of membership before the vote, including benefits to EU migrants and freeing businesses from Brussels' red tape.

'Loyalty to the country'

Mr Farage is back in post as UKIP's leader after a short-lived resignation and recent in-fighting within the party.

He told the BBC's Today programme that the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) group and Labour peer Lord Mandelson had already begun arguing the case to stay in the EU, but those wanting to exit could get caught out if the prime minister decided on an early vote.

"What I want to see are people who've been Tory and Labour veteran Eurosceptics standing up and saying that Mr Cameron is simply not asking for enough and that they should be joining forces with us and others to get the campaign going."

He added: "My worry is that many of these well-known Tory Eurosceptics - I suspect their loyalty to the Conservative party may in the end be greater than their loyalty to the country and this cause."

He said he saw UKIP as the only Eurosceptic organisation in Britain.

In the absence of an umbrella group of anti-EU businesses and cross-party campaigners, UKIP was going to start the ground game, he added.

"I'm not saying UKIP on their own could win the referendum", but they could be "a very important part and component of it", he said.

At a speech at UKIP's first regional post-election conference, Mr Farage said the "People's Army" - his name for UKIP supporters - was stronger now than it had ever been.

He told cheering delegates that he was disappointed neither he nor Mark Reckless had won parliamentary seats, but said he was proud that many of the four million UKIP voters were first-time voters inspired by UKIP to have their say.

He was also due to tell supporters they should not wait for details of David Cameron's promised reforms before starting their "no" campaign.

There was no time to waste in galvanising support, he was expected to say, and he was to pledge to have his "People's Army" mobilised by the autumn.

On Friday, Mr Farage said he believed David Cameron was trying to "frame the debate around benefits for migrants when actually it's not about that".

"It's about sheer numbers that come, it's about change to communities, it's about wage compression for ordinary workers."

'Strongest' position

Eurosceptic Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin said credit should be given to the prime minister for seeking a "fundamental" change in the UK's relationship with the EU.

"But unless we control things like migration, like how much we pay to the EU from our own Westminster Parliament, we are not actually making much of a change to our relationship," he told the Today programme.

"At that point I think Mr Farage and I might find that we've got more in common than he is prepared to admit at the moment."

The Eastbourne conference follows a period of turmoil within the party after the general election when Mr Farage resigned as leader but then returned just days later.

But he says his position as party leader is now the "strongest it has ever been".

"At this time, what people in UKIP and our backers say is, 'Nigel, without you, this could never have happened and you cannot desert the battlefield,'" he said.