UKIP leader Nigel Farage has addressed hundreds of party supporters at a meeting in Hampshire this evening.

He visited Eastleigh to round off his party's election campaign before Thursday's European and local elections.

Mr Farage, one of the party's ten candidates for the European elections for the South East, told supporters he believed the party would cause an “earthquake” in Thursday's elections.

He also gave an ironic thanks to Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg for allowing him to debate with him on television, and blasted the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems, as well as the national media for not allowing him to debate with them about the UK's place in the European Union.

The meeting came after he made controversial remarks on Romanian people during a radio interview last week, which have been criticised as “racist” by some people including Labour MPs.

Daily Echo:

Addressing supporters at the Fleming Park Leisure Centre, he said: “What has happened is the establishment have joined together and decided we will not have this debate.”

He went on to describe the EU as a “desperately outmoded customs union” which he urged people to “divorce themselves from”.

Party colleagues and fellow MEP candidates, Diane James, who came second in the Eastleigh by-election last year, and Patricia Culligan, who drew loud cheers from the audience when she declared UKIP had “shaken politics up”.

She also added that UKIP was not anti-immigrant, and that the party wanted to introduce a points based system on for would-be migrants.