LONDON (TIP): He might be hawkish about immigration but UKIP chief Nigel Farage took inspiration on voting day from a one-time migrant – Mahatma Gandhi.

Farage drew inspiration from Gandhi to answer his critics who has been talking about UKIP’s popularity nose diving over the past few weeks.

Quoting Gandhi, Farage said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, and then you win. Whatever they say about us, we must turn the other cheek and not descend to their level, and that’s what we have done.”

He added, “UKIP vote is rock solid.”

UKIP has earlier called for immigrants to be barred from receiving any benefits until they have been resident in the UK for five years.

Farage had said, “We must be completely mad, as a country, to be giving people from Eastern Europe in-work benefits. Even if I thought, which I don’t, there was an economic benefit to mass immigration some things are more important than money, namely the shape of our society and giving our own youngsters a chance to work.”

The British Social Attitudes Survey suggested that more than three quarters of Britons wanted to see a cut in immigration – and 56% wanted to see a major crackdown. Of those surveyed 47% thought immigration was bad for the economy, and among the 31% of respondents who said it was good for the economy, half wanted to see immigration reduced anyway.

UKIP has been hawkish about immigration and its policy wants to make overstaying a visa a criminal offence. It wants to cap annual number of immigration to UK at 50,000 a year and introduce a five year freeze on immigration for permanent settlement. It is also against immigrants applying for a public housing or benefits until they had paid tax for five years.