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Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has attacked the Tories' policy on university tuition fees, saying they are "loading up young people with debt" and doing "nothing" about skills and training.

"Why? Because they think they don't have to bother about young people because young people to them don't matter because they don't vote," he said.

Mr McDonnell was praised by Jeremy Corbyn at a campaign rally in Birmingham. The Labour leader said that if his party won the election, the shadow chancellor would "do the sums and look at all the options... but in his mind will always be the effects of every policy on the most vulnerable and poorest in our society".

Ask Look North visited a touring youth group scheme aimed at getting young adults voting on 8 June.

Image source, Sky

Launching a Lib Dem election poster, Sir Vince Cable has said that the Conservative Party has now taken on key language and policies espoused by UKIP and that the two now represented a "regressive alliance" for Britain.

Sir Vince, speaking at a campaigning event in south-west London, told party activists: "Remember the words of Nigel Farage, that she [Theresa May] is using exactly the words and phrases I have been using for the last 20 years. 'I'm very thrilled', he said.

"And he has every reason to be thrilled because she has adopted wholesale the UKIP package of hard, extreme Brexit: taking us out of the single market, out of the customs union and breaking up co-operaton around science and the environment."

The same held true on immigration, said Sir Vince, so the parties were now closely aligned: "It isn't just a common ground around ideas. There is an alliance. It's not a progressive alliance. It's a regressive alliance."

UKIP was now pulling candidates out of around a third of seats, he said.

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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is speaking at a campaign rally in Birmingham.

He has been focusing on the Conservative Party's policies on pensioner benefits, which he describes as a "triple whammy of misery for pensioners".

"Older people should not be turned into a political football in this election," he added.

Mr Corbyn has also called on young people to vote - saying that politics had left them behind and promising to make education free "at all levels".

Liberal Democrat former business secretary Sir Vince Cable has accused Theresa May of "destroying the legacy" left by her Conservative predecessor Margaret Thatcher.

Speaking during a campaign visit in south-west London today, Sir Vince said Mrs May could have taken Lady Thatcher as her role model as prime minister, but was instead going against the very policies created by her:

"It was Mrs Thatcher, who we remember, introduced the single market, the four freedoms [the freedom of movement of goods, capital, services and labour]. It was a great creation. It was not created by Brussels. It was created in Britain by a British prime minister, a Conservative prime minister - and Theresa May is now destroying that legacy."

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Here's a photo of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn arriving in Birmingham.

He's due to give a campaign rally speech at International Convention Centre later .

UKIP has suspended one of its General Election candidates over a set of social media posts which prompted allegations of racism.

Paddy Singh, a former cavalry officer, will continue to be listed as a UKIP candidate on the ballot paper in Wiltshire, but the party is withdrawing its endorsement of him.

Controversy had flared after Twitter posts surfaced written by Captain Singh dating back to 2014 and 2016: comments on Israel, China and Pakistan.

A UKIP spokesman said that as soon as the comments came to its attention the party "suspended him from his membership of the party" and "removed our endorsement of him as candidate." But as the deadline for nominations has passed, UKIP is unable to remove Capt Singh's party designation from the ballot paper or nominate an alternative candidate for the constituency.

Image source, Sky

Former Liberal Democrat MP Vince Cable is on his feet now in Twickenham, south-west London where he's standing in the general election.

Here's a full list of candidates in the constituency

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Politicians and parliamentary candidates are being targeted by "unacceptable" online abuse.

Scottish taxpayers could be "short-changed" unless Westminster funds the Conservatives' promise to preserve winter fuel payments for all pensioners in Scotland while scrapping them for wealthier pensioners in England and Wales, the SNP's pensions spokesman, Ian Blackford, has said.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Blackford said the Conservatives were "all over the place" on the policy - Tory leader in Scotland Ruth Davidson says all pensioners in Scotland should keep the payments.

Mr Blackford said: "The question is, where will the funding come from? Last year, that cost £158 million in Scotland.

"We need to make sure, if the Conservatives are saying that winter fuel payments are going to be protected, that the funding for that comes from the Westminster government in order that we can do that."

Some people paying for care say it would help them but others feel left in the dark

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Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer has rejected suggestions, external by the Unite union leader Len McCluskey that winning 200 seats in the general election could mark a “successful campaign” for Labour.

Mr McCluskey said on Tuesday that stopping a Conservative majority from rising “dramatically” would mark a good performance.

"People like me are always optimistic… things can happen," Mr McCluskey said.

"But I don’t see Labour winning,,,,,I believe that if Labour can hold on to 200 seats or so it will be a successful campaign. It will mean that Theresa May will have had an election, will have increased her majority but not dramatically.”

But Sir Keir, quoted by the Politics Home website during campaign visits in marginal Labour constituencies, has said that that number of seats would “probably give the Tories 30 or 40 more seats, which would put them at 350. Nobody could call that success.”

Theresa May has turned her fire on Labour with a piece in the Daily Mail, external in which she argues that the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott walking through the door of 10 Downing Street should "scare us all".

The prime minister said that if her Conservative Party loses just six seats, it will lose the election - and Corbyn "will be sitting down to negotiate with the presidents, prime ministers and chancellors of Europe".

Meanwhile, the Labour leader has stepped up his attack on the prime minister following the Conservative Party's manifesto launch on Thursday, saying that she is trying to "pitch the young against the old" by planning to scrap the state pension "triple lock" and universal winter fuel allowance.

Image source, AFP

Labour's John Woodcock - a supporter of the party's official policy to renew the Trident nuclear weapons system - has said that it was "unfortunate" that disagreement on the issue had broken out yesterday, because the issue had already been been settled.

In an interview with LBC radio, Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry suggested that a future defence review under a Labour government could result in a reversal of the decision to back Trident.

It was an idea quickly quashed last night by Labour's Shadow Defence Secretary Nia Griffiths who said that the party's support for Trident remained unaltered.

Now former shadow minister Mr Woodcock, who is standing again in Barrow-in-Furness, where the nuclear submarines are made, said: 'Nia was right. Whether you are in favour of Trident renewal or not, it's kind of tough now - because it's happening. We had the vote last year. We put the project past the point of no return."

Asked whether the policy could yet be reversed were Ms.Thornberry to become foreign secretary after a Labour general election win, Mr Woodcock said: "Well I'm afraid she's not going to be - and Labour is going to be in opposition. But the important thing is that we have as strong an opposition as we can."

Click here for a full list of candidates in the Barrow & Furness constituency.

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The Conservatives plan to means test winter fuel payments in England, if they win the election.

But Scottish Conservative Party leader, Ruth Davidson, says that all Scottish pensioners should continue to get winter fuel payments - because the country is colder.

She said she would not call on First Minister Nicola Sturgeon - whose Scottish National Party wants to keep winter fuel payments - to fall in line with the rest of the UK.

"We have made a different choice in Scotland in our Scottish manifesto today. We believe there should not be means-testing for the winter fuel payment," Ms Davidson said.

"The reason that we have said that is that Scotland has a colder climate. We also have a different amount of housing stock."

Labour has criticised the plans and say up to 10m pensioners could lose out.

Campaigning continues today with less than three weeks to go until the general election and the parties are keeping up a brisk pace with a variety of speeches and events.

Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to be campaigning in London - a series of key marginals in Tory sights - while Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn is heading for the West Midlands and Merseyside.

Former Lib Dem Cabinet minister Vince Cable, who is hoping to return to Westminster two years after losing his seat, is on the stump in south-west London and UKIP leader Paul Nuttall will be in east London and Essex.

Green Party co-leader Jonathan Bartley is also in London, launching policies on housing, education and work, including the abolition of tuition fees.

Welcome to our continuing live coverage of the UK general election campaign as parties continue to bid for votes ahead of 8 June.

Follow our live page for the latest news from the campaign trail.

The Guardian

In 2015, when Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader, the Guardian reported, external that a whistleblower "revealed that police compiled secret files on the political activities of Corbyn and nine other MPs, even after they had been elected to the House of Commons".

The Guardian reported that whistleblower Peter Francis formerly worked for the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), "the secret undercover unit that spied on hundreds of political groups between 1968 and 2008, external".

In March 2015, Mr Corbyn said:

The Daily Telegraph

The Telegraph has a story that "MI5 opened a file on Jeremy Corbyn amid concerns over his links to the IRA".

In the paper's words: "The Labour leader was investigated over fears that he could have been a threat to national security at a time when he was supporting convicted terrorists and campaigning for a unified Ireland.

"It was against the background of his support for the Republican cause that MI5 began looking into Mr Corbyn’s activities, and a source close to the investigation confirmed a file had been opened on him by the early 1990s.

They told the Telegraph: "If there was a file on someone, it meant they had come to notice. We opened a temporary file and did a preliminary investigation. It was then decided whether we should open a permanent file on them".

You can read the full article here., external