Image source, Reuters

Speaking on a campaign visit in Paisley earlier today, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon - who takes part in the BBC Scotland leaders' debate at 20:00 - said if the Conservatives win the election “it could be the most damaging government that Scotland has had in recent history".

Ms Sturgeon urged voters to back the SNP to “make sure Boris Johnson does not get the majority he is working for”.

“We’ve got two days to reject a Tory future and choose a brighter future instead," she said.

“We can make sure we lock Boris Johnson out of government, we can find an escape route from mess of Brexit and put Scotland’ future into Scotland’s hands".

Throughout the election campaign BBC Radio 5 Live has been measuring "the mood of the nation".

Today's edition of the Election Barometer focuses on crime with 5 Live's Nihal Arthanayake putting listeners' questions to former detective Peter Williams and the BBC's home affairs correspondent, Danny Shaw.

Subjects under the spotlight include knife crime and the decriminalisation of drugs.

You can listen to the latest Election Barometer here.

Reality Check

Yesterday's campaigning was dominated by criticism of Boris Johnson's response to a photo of a little boy lying on the floor in A&E.

But as the debate swirled, this post emerged on Facebook claiming that, according to "a good friend" who is a senior nursing sister at Leeds Hospital, the boy's mother staged the photo to send to the media and that, in fact, the boy did have a hospital trolley.

It was first posted on Facebook, we think at about 18:30 GMT on 9 December. This post, shared at least 20,000 times, has since been deleted.

But BBC Newsnight has spoken to the owner of this account who said that they do not, in fact, have a good friend who is a senior nursing sister at Leeds hospital.

So what's going on?

You can read Reality Check's piece about how the post spread here.

During the election campaign we've profiled the main party leaders in detail and with polling day looming we want to give you the chance to read them again.

Many have tried to define Nicola Sturgeon. The SNP leader has appeared in the pages of Vogue and on American chat shows. The Sun photoshopped her face on to Miley Cyrus’s body riding a wrecking ball, while a Daily Mail front page screamed that she was the “Most Dangerous Woman in Britain”.

Ahead of tonight's Scottish leaders' debate, our Scotland correspondent James Cook tells her story.

You can also read our pieces on the other party leaders here:

• Jeremy Corbyn
• Jo Swinson
• Boris Johnson
• Nigel Farage

Image source, PA Media

Earlier, environmental campaigners dressed as bees, from the group Extinction Rebellion, held up the Conservative campaign bus in Staffordshire.

The group said the Tories' decarbonisation target of 2050 was "quite frankly a death sentence for everybody".

BBC political correspondent Alex Forsyth said the police were in attendance to try to “unstick the bees” from the front of the bus.

She then confirmed they had been removed:

An account appearing to belong to Greig Baker - the friend who Labour's Jonathan Ashworth was talking to in a conversation that was later leaked - has tweeted, suggesting he had a duty to report the comments.

Shadow health secretary Mr Ashworth says he was just "joshing around" when criticising Jeremy Corbyn. The conversation was secretly recorded and then leaked to the press.

Tonight's debate sees leading figures from the SNP, Scottish Labour, the Scottish Tories and Scottish Lib Dems appear in front of a live audience in Glasgow.

They'll take questions from the audience as well as from voters around Scotland.

The debate will be chaired by the BBC's Scotland editor, Sarah Smith.

Who's taking part?

The SNP's Party leader Nicola Sturgeon, who is the first minister of Scotland, a post she has held for five years. Her party was the third-largest at Westminster before the election.

Scottish Conservatives' Jackson Carlaw, who has been the party's interim leader since September having previously served as deputy leader to Ruth Davidson.

Scottish Labour's Richard Leonard, who has been Scottish Labour leader since November 2017 and is seen as a key ally of Jeremy Corbyn.

Scottish Liberal Democrats' Willie Rennie, who has been an MSP since 2006 and has led the the party since 2011.

Where to watch?

It will be broadcast on BBC One in Scotland and on iPlayer from 20:00 to 21:00 and streamed live on the BBC News website.

You can also follow the latest reaction and analysis on this live page.

• One of the biggest election stories today has been on Jon Ashworth, Labour's health spokesman. A conversation he'd had with a Tory activist friend was secretly recorded and leaked, and it exposes him saying he did not believe Labour would win the election. Mr Ashworth later apologised for his comments and claimed he was "joshing around". Jeremy Corbyn also said it was "a bit of banter between two old friends" and suggested Mr Ashworth had an "odd sense of humour" but that he "makes jokes the whole time". He his full support, Mr Corbyn added.
• Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn has been on the campaign trail in the north of England. He attended a party rally in Carlisle where he repeated his campaign messages, saying the government had underfunded the NHS and four million people were waiting for operations. He also visited a primary school in Morecambe where the children asked him what music and art he liked. His answer - Cubist art and BBC Radio 6 Music.
• Conservative leader Boris Johnson pulled off a stunt at the JCB factory in Staffordshire earlier, by driving a Union-flag themed truck through a through a fake wall saying “gridlock”. He said backing him will allow the country to go forward, "punching through the current deadlock and achieving a brighter future together" and that he was "fighting for every vote" to stop a hung Parliament.
• However, the PM is still facing criticism over his reaction to an image of a sick boy on a hospital floor, which went viral yesterday. Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said the prime minister expressed "sorrow and regret" for what he saw.
• Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson has been in Bath speaking to an audience of party activists. Repeating her party's core message, she said the campaign to stop Brexit was part of a "fight for the soul of our country". She added: "This is about whether we are open or closed, generous or selfish, whether we reach out and work with others or pull up the drawbridge."
• Meanwhile, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has made a last-ditch appeal to Leave supporters. He appeared at a news conference in Westminster where he criticised Mr Johnson's Brexit deal, claiming it would lead to "years of agonising negotiations".
• The Greens are focusing on a pledge to cancel student debt built up since 2012. It has outlined plans to cancel the outstanding loans of all those who attended universities in England since tuition fees rose to £9,000 in 2012.
• SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has warned that Mr Johnson poses the greatest threat to Scotland of "any prime minister in modern times". She's been on the campaign trail, meeting Waspi women at a painting class and also took part in a knitting demonstration.
• Later, Ms Sturgeon and other Scottish leaders will take part in a debate on BBC Scotland later.
• Away from the campaign trail, research has suggested the abuse of candidates on Twitter has escalated during the election campaign - with Conservatives seeing the biggest rise.
• Read our full round up of what the parties have been up to today here.

Earlier today, Labour's Jonathan Ashworth apologised to his party after criticising Jeremy Corbyn in a secret recording by his Tory activist friend.

Mr Corbyn says his colleague retains his full support.

Here's a little more detail on that announcement we brought you earlier from the Green Party, which has said it will write off some student debt in England.

The plan, which would cost an estimated £34bn, would see the cancellation of the outstanding loans of all those who attended universities in England since tuition fees rose to £9,000 in 2012.

At the moment, students do not incur any upfront costs but have to start repaying their loans once their income is above a certain level, depending on when they graduated. They also have to pay interest on their loans of as much as 6%.

Green Party deputy leader Amelia Womack said the write-off made economic sense as the government would be cancelling billions of pounds of student debt anyway given that thousands of students would not repay the full amount owed by the 30-year cut-off point.

The party calculates the move would push up the UK's debt by about £40bn by 2050, factoring in reduced future repayments from graduates but also the loans that the government would have written off anyway.

Read our full story.

This is an interesting watch.

Joe Kenny has voted in every election held in Northern Ireland over the past 24 years, but as blind man he has never been able to vote in secret.

The campaigner says it is unfair that blind and partially-sighted people have little privacy when they enter a polling booth.

"It's now 2019, folks - I think it's high time that we looked at some sort of online solution," he says.

Compare where the parties stand on key issues - from Brexit and the NHS to education and the environment.

You can compare the parties' manifestos here.

Image source, Getty Images

Earlier, we reported on the comments from David Merritt, the father of Jack Merritt who was killed in a knife attack by Usman Khan on London Bridge last month.

Mr Merritt told Sky News he believes Mr Johnson "saw an opportunity" to score political points, when "what was required was just a dignified approach".

The PM blamed Khan's release on legislation introduced under "a leftie government", and called for longer sentences and an end to automatic release.

Asked about Mr Merritt's comments today, Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the warning and said his remarks were "very heartfelt".

"His son was somebody who absolutely believed in rehabilitation of prisoners and eventually was sadly killed by one that clearly had not been rehabilitated," said Mr Corbyn.

"The points that David Merritt was making was, we have a problem in the Prison Service, the lack of probation service and all the issues that go with it, and he was concerned about knee-jerk reactions by politicians.

"Nobody ever wants this kind of disaster ever to happen again. Let's deal with it in an intelligent way, not in a knee-jerk reaction."

Image source, PA Media

Environmental campaigners dressed as bees, from Extinction Rebellion, continue to hold up the Conservative campaign bus in Staffordshire.

BBC political correspondent Alex Forsyth says the police are in attendance to try to “unstick the bees” from the front of the bus.

One activist, who identified himself as James, said the Conservatives had failed for the duration of the entire general election campaign "to raise the prospect of the climate and ecological crisis which is facing humanity and all life on this planet".

He added that the Tories' decarbonisation target of 2050 was "quite frankly a death sentence for everybody".

Campaigners dressed as bees have previously targeted the Lib Dems and the Brexit Party during this campaign.

Here's a reminder of what the main parties are promising when it comes to the environment.

Image source, Getty Images

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon met some of the so-called "Waspi" women - the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign - at a painting class earlier.

The campaign is focusing on women who were born in the 1950s who lost out as a result of changes to the state pension age.

(You can read about the Waspi campaign here.)

Ms Sturgeon and SNP candidate Philippa Whitford visited an art school in Paisley in Scotland. The SNP support the Waspi campaign.

"Waspi women deserve justice," Ms Sturgeon told Heart Scotland., external "They've had their pension entitlement stolen from them.

"It's one example of the price that Scotland has paid for a Tory government that we didn't vote for."

The abuse of candidates on Twitter has escalated during the election campaign, research suggests, with Conservatives seeing the biggest rise.

Abuse spiked after the TV debates, a study by the University of Sheffield found - with abuse of Tories rising, and Labour and Lib Dem levels remaining stable.

Labour's Jeremy Corbyn received the most, with Tory leader Boris Johnson next.

Of the top 20 recipients of abuse between 3 November and 4 December, the study found that 11 were Conservative, seven were Labour and two were Lib Dem.

Read our full story here.

On the campaign trail today, Boris Johnson has been emphasising the Conservative slogan "Get Brexit done" once again.

But what does that mean? Here's some analysis from the BBC Reality Check team, explaining how Brexit is more than a single event, but a complex process that will go on for years.

Jeremy Corbyn has been asked about the leaked conversation between Labour's shadow health secretary Jon Ashworthand a friend.

Mr Ashworth criticised Mr Corbyn in the secret recording, and is heard saying he did not believe Labour would win the election.

Mr Corbyn said Mr Ashworth had “called him straight away” and that the recording on the Guido Fawkes website was “a bit of banter between friends”.

Mr Corbyn said Mr Ashworth had said it “was all about reverse psychology banter – as in football”.

He added that it was "irrelevant" and added: "The issue is children being treated on the floors of hospital."

Asked if he thinks people would believe Mr Ashworth's claim that it was "banter", Mr Corbyn said: "They can decide for themselves on Thursday whether they want to invest in the health service... or let it be destroyed."

And when pressed about Mr Ashworth's comment that No 10 "will pretty quickly move to safeguard security" if Mr Corbyn were PM, Mr Corbyn replied: "Jon and I have known each other for a very long time and he was actually making some jokes."

He suggested it was an "odd sense of humour" but that Mr Ashworth "makes jokes the whole time".

"Jon Ashworth has done fantastic campaigning for the NHS," he added.