Jeremy Corbyn has insisted he is "not going to take blame" if Labour votes mean Britain backs Brexit.
The Labour leader laughed off claims that he now backed the Remain campaign because he had joined 'the Establishment', but stressed that he wanted changes in Brussels to protect workers' rights.
In an interview on Sky News - his only live TV event on Europe during the referendum - Corbyn admitted he was “not a lover of the European Union”.
But despite claims from some fellow Labour MPs that he has not shown enough passion for the In campaign, and left voters unsure of the party's position, he said he would not be responsible if the UK voted to quit the EU.
“I am not going to take blame for people’s decision,” he said.
“There will be a decision made on Thursday. I am hoping there is going to be a remain vote. There may well be a remain vote. But there may well be a leave vote. Whatever the result – that will be the result of the referendum. We have got to work with it.”
Some Labour MPs have warned privately that Corbyn's leadership would be under threat after a Brexit vote, just as David Cameron's would be.
Corbyn conceded that there were “differences” within the Remain camp as he warned that the planned EU-US free trade deal could “import the worst working and standards conditions into Europe”.
He also broke with previous Labour leaders in underlining his backbench opposition to the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties on greater EU integration, saying they promoted a 'free-market' Europe that he hadn't wanted.
Underlining Vote Leave's warnings about George Osborne's 'Project Fear', he also accused the Remain side of making a series of “catastrophist” warnings about the risk of leaving the EU and conceded that the debate has been “poisonous”.
The Labour leader was repeatedly pressed over views on immigration as audience members raised concerns that eastern European migrants are driving down the wages of British workers.
But he said: “If you restrict movement of labour across Europe then you are defeating the whole point of there being one market across Europe.”
He insisted that migrants were not to blame for wages cuts, and that big companies were instead at fault.
Corbyn made a passionate defence of the rights of refugees to be treated humanely and said that an international solution was better than the UK trying to combat the issue alone.
Challenged by one audience member, who claimed he was burying his own Brexit views because he had now joined 'the Establishment', he said his radical stance hadn't changed.
"I'm not a part of the Establishment. I'm the leader of the Labour party, I'm a Labour MP. And my socialist views are totally unchanged."