UKIP leader Nigel Farage rolled into Bolton town centre proclaiming the message ‘we want our country back’.

The vocal ‘Brexit’ campaigner was mobbed by cheering crowds after arriving on a battle bus on Victoria Square as he visited the town centre prior to appearing on stage at the Bolton Whites Hotel.

Mr Farage also took the time to have a tour of Bolton’s Historic town hall — but UKIP chiefs were asked not to use photographs taken inside the building because the council is in a neutral purdah period ahead of the crucial vote next month.

Council officers looked on as the UKIP leader casually strolled around the iconic listed building before visiting UKIP Bolton’s party office.

Mr Farage has campaigned for two decades for Britain to leave the European Union and told The Bolton News that the June 23 vote may be the “biggest decision that residents will ever have to make.”

He said: “I sometimes think that having fought for this for more than twenty years, it is almost difficult to believe it is happening —of course I’m nervous, you would have to be a moron not to be.”

He said that he believes in towns like Bolton, the key issue of immigration has left people feeling disenfranchised.

He added: “People are seeing their communities change — in some parts of the North beyond recognition — nobody ever asked them whether this should happen.

“They see their kids and grandkids struggling to get into their primary school of choice because they are full, they see a local NHS under strain that we can only call intolerable, they see the workers in their family on average wages their living — the truth is that mass, uncontrolled immigration has been very good for the rich and very bad for ordinary people.”

Speaking from the top deck of his battle bus on the square, Mr Farage told the gathered crowd: “Business will still be business, we are not voting here about trade or business — we are voting about who governs this country.”

Asked whether a referendum defeat would signal the end of his political career, he defiantly stated: “You don’t ask a general going in to battle how he prepares to surrender if he loses the battle, he goes into battle wanting to win and believing he will win and I do.”

He also said how “proud” he was to be sat in the UKIP office in the town hall and praised the local group for another successful election in which it raised its number of councillors to five.

Discussions with council chiefs centred on the use of any photographs taken of Mr Farage inside the building, with the authority stressing that as it is now under the pre-vote purdah period, it should not be seen to be assisting or promoting one side of the debate.

However, The Bolton News understands that UKIP’s national party plan to appeal against that council’s request not to use the photographs, citing that the date the UK Government begins its purdah period is not until Friday.