BBC Politics Live
BBC2's lunchtime political programme

Today's Politics Live panel have discussed the leaked recording of Labour shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth in which he appears to criticise his leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Financial Times journalist Laura Hughes said: "It’s really embarrassing for Jonathan Ashworth.

"I think it’s quite hard for him to argue it was banter, because what he says was actually quite damning and possibly reflective of what a lot of Labour MPs and Labour candidates are saying on the campaign trail."

But she says she believes the row involving Boris and four-year-old Jack is more damaging.

LBC Radio host Iain Dale agreed: "It’s very difficult to dismiss this as banter when you read the whole transcript, he is reflecting, I think, the mood of a lot of Labour politicians."

Victoria Derbyshire

On the subject of the NHS struggling with demand, mother Louise Webb told Victoria Derbyshire earlier she waited six hours in hospital for her nine-month-old daughter to be seen by a paediatrician.

An image of Lily appeared on this morning's Daily Mirror front page.

It comes a day after an image of a four-year-old boy lying on a hospital floor sparked a political row.

BBC Politics Live
BBC2's lunchtime political programme

"I do support the leader. I want to be health secretary," Mr Ashworth says as he continues to insist his critical remarks about Labour and Jeremy Corbyn were a joke.

Mr Ashworth says he was trying to "lull" his friend who was a Conservative activist "into a false sense of security" ahead of polling day.

"In the cold light of day, it's obviously stupid. It was a private conversation with someone I've been matey with since 2007 and I was trying to make him feel like he didn’t have to work harder in the campaign."

He moves the conversation onto condemning the Conservative record on the NHS.

"On a year by year basis, we're now down 17,000 beds since 2010," he says, and argues voters will be more "fed up with the fact we've got the worst cancer waiting lists on record" than concerned about his leaked comments.

We mentioned Nigel Farage a few moments ago so this feels like a good time to remind you that the BBC has looked closely at the main party leaders, their stories and what makes them tick.

With polling day less than 48 hours away we want to give you the chance to read our profiles again.

In this piece, BBC parliamentary correspondent Mark d'Arcy looks at the Brexit Party leader. A controversial figure, a political force in his own right. That rare sub-species of politician seen by voters as distinctive - so who is he really?

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

• Jeremy Corbyn
• Boris Johnson
• Nicola Sturgeon
• Jo Swinson

BBC Politics Live
BBC2's lunchtime political programme

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth is again defended comments he made in a leaked recording criticising Jeremy Corbyn.

He says: "That clearly is banter in my voice. Of course it’s embarrassing, I look like a plonker."

Mr Ashworth says the comments weren't serious and that he was trying to convince the person who recorded the conversation, a friend who is also a Conservative activist, that Tory attack lines were working.

He likens it to the sort of thing football managers do.

"It’s like when you’re trying to wind up your opponents. Again, he’s a Tory activist with friends in CCHQ, and I’m saying to him, 'These are your attack lines, they’re working’… I’m trying to make him complacent."

He says he's tried to be "too clever by half".

Image source, AFP

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has been speaking at a press conference in central London, where he urged Labour Leave voters to "vote tactically" and back his party in seats where the Brexit Party is standing.

He said his decision to stand down his party's candidates in Conservative-held seats was "difficult" but "the right thing to do".

He said: "My appeal is to Leave voters in those constituencies that have been Labour forever - and will be Labour when you wake up on Friday morning - unless you use your vote tactically and sensibly.

"And to Leavers in those seats I say 'Leavers, don't waste your vote.'"

This, we're told, is the Brexit Party's final pre-election media event, so this must be a message he wants to stick.

After the picture of a sick four-year-old boy sleeping on the floor of a Leeds hospital dominated yesterday’s headlines, there have been some posts circulating on social media claiming that it was staged.

The story was first broken by the Yorkshire Evening Post, whose editor James Mitchinson has responded to a reader called Margaret who questioned the authenticity of the photo.

He tells Margaret: “We went to great lengths to establish the story was true and to check that the hospital accepted as much.

"I do not blame you for contacting me as you have done. You are not the only one..."

He adds that he’s not surprised she was misled by posts claiming to have inside knowledge of how the hospital was run, but says it was made by an account that has now been deleted and there is no way of holding that person to account.

Click through from the tweet below to read the full response...

It's been a busy morning on the campaign trail - with another unexpected turn derailing the parties' attempts to stick to their key messages.

• A leaked recording of shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth shows him saying Labour's electoral prospects are "dire" and there's no way they could win. He is insisting the comments were "banter" with a friend. Read the full story here.
• The recording was published by website Guido Fawkes shortly before Mr Ashworth was due to appear on the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme - leaving him to defend his comments live on air.
• Labour was hoping to focus its campaigning on the NHS today - warning that under-funding is putting patients at risk. Challenged over whether his party was using a photo of a sick four-year-old boy sleeping on a hospital floor as a "political football", Jeremy Corbyn insisted NHS funding was a "political issue".
• It came after Mr Johnson faced criticism on Monday over his response to the image. Justice Secretary Robert Buckland defended him on the Today programme earlier, saying the prime minister apologised to the family.
• Mr Johnson will try to keep the focus on Brexit in a speech later, when he will warn of the "danger" of another inconclusive result if voters to not turn out to support the Conservatives.
• But Nigel Farage says he's "disappointed" with the direction Mr Johnson appeared to be moving in over Brexit, suggesting he was moving away from a Canada-style trade deal with the EU. Watch the full clip from the Today programme here.
• SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon will appear alongside other Scottish leaders in a TV debate on BBC Scotland later. Read our guide to the programme here.
• Leaders of the main parties in Northern Ireland will also take part in a debate on BBC One NI.

Image source, RNIB

Total privacy when voting is something most people will take for granted when they go to their polling station in the general election on Thursday.

But not 42-year-old Joe Kenny.

The Northern Ireland man has voted in every election since he was 18 - but has never cast his ballot in private.

That is because he is blind and requires assistance to mark his ballot paper. But he has said it is "high time" an online system was introduced for people with visual impairments.

He says it's "high time" the system was made fairer.

Read more.

Reality Check

Image source, Getty Images

Actor Hugh Grant was on the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning talking about his support for tactical voting at this election.

"I think it's 69 out of the last 70 national opinion polls seem to suggest that the country has now managed to sift information from disinformation and come to the conclusion that we would prefer to remain in the EU," he said.

We've looked at the polls and he's broadly correct. Of the last 70 polls, there was one Survation poll in May, external that had Leave in the lead by one point. There were two polls that were tied: a Deltapoll one, external from just over a week ago and one from September from BMG, external.

All the rest favoured Remain, although many of the results were within the margin of error for this sort of poll.

It's well worth reading this October piece from Prof Sir John Curtice about whether voters have changed their minds on Brexit.

Image source, AFP/Getty

Speaking of Brexit...

The election campaign may have been going on for several weeks now but - with only a few days to go until the vote - some people may only be turning their attention to it for the first time.

Each day brings a flurry of news stories but if you want to take a step back and remind yourself of the issues, have a look at the BBC's comprehensive guides.

So let's start with Brexit - here we break down how the parties say they would manage this huge and divisive issue.

Other guides include:

• Where do the parties stand on climate change?

• What are the parties offering to the country's 13 million disabled people?
• And what about social care?

Image source, AFP

We haven't heard much so far today from the Lib Dems, but they are out on the campaign trail and gearing up for a big last push before polling day.

Party candidate and Brexit spokesman Tom Brake, who has been at the launch of the Lib Dems' final campaign poster in central London, has been reiterating their main aim - to stop Brexit.

He says the Lib Dems are the only party in this election that “can take seats from the Conservatives”.

“By doing so we can stop Boris Johnson getting the majority that he’s so desperate for, which he intends using to crash us out of the European Union at the end of December 2020 - something that he has not denied.”

Mr Johnson has pledged to finalise leaving the EU by 31 January, and said a trade deal will be done with the bloc by the following December.

However, he has also said if no deal is done by that deadline, the UK will still leave.

Many feel that timetable is optimistic to say the least.

As we just mentioned that Jon Ashworth has pulled out of speaking to our colleagues on 5 Live, here's a bit more of what he was recorded saying.

The shadow health secretary insists he was joking with a friend, who is a Tory activist - but does not deny he made the comments.

Mr Ashworth sounds far from optimistic about Labour's election prospects outside of city seats, describing them as "abysmal" in towns in the Midlands and the north of England.

"They don’t like Johnson but they can’t stand Corbyn and they think Labour’s blocked Brexit," he is heard saying.

Mr Ashworth suggests Labour is doing well among Remain-supporting middle-class graduates but "not in big enough numbers to deny the Tories a majority".

“The question is for Labour if it gets itself a half-decent leader, next time round if it can reverse and regain its sort of traditional heartland seats," he adds.

Asked how long it would take to replace Jeremy Corbyn if the Tories win a majority, Mr Ashworth says: "I think things can change quickly. I think things change more quickly generally now."

Read the full story.

BBC Radio 5 Live

Alex Forsyth
Political correspondent

Image source, Getty Images

It was a pretty turbulent day on the campaign trail for the Conservative Party yesterday, so today it will be very much about getting this campaign back on track, focusing on their core message around Brexit.

We are just leaving Gloucestershire where we were overnight to head to Staffordshire, where the prime minister will appear later this afternoon.

The message he's delivering is a warning of the risks of gridlock, the risks of further stalemate, if there isn't a Conservative majority.

And he'll be following a pattern seen since the very start of this campaign - targeting the Leave areas in the Midlands and the North with the Tory Brexit message - warning against a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.

You can expect to hear a lot more of that from the PM, but alongside that they want to portray that this election is by no means a done deal.

Boris Johnson will warn his supporters - "if you don't get out and vote, then what comes next could be very uncertain."

As details of the leaked recording of his shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth emerged, Jeremy Corbyn was speaking to supporters at a rally in Nelson, Lancashire - a Conservative-held seat that Labour lost in 2010 but is hopeful of regaining.

The BBC's Dan Johnson is there and says the chosen location suggests "there is perhaps confidence and ambition" in Mr Corbyn's campaign.

In his speech, the Labour leader focused on his core messages on the NHS, climate change and investing in public services.

"There is a large, vocal, passionate crowd here," Dan says.

"We perhaps haven’t seen the same sizes of crowds that we saw in 2017 at some of those huge rallies - maybe that just tells us something about a wet and windy election campaign being fought in the middle of December.

"There are some detractors here too - I spoke to one man who said he’d voted Labour all his life but would never support a communist.

"That is Jeremy Corbyn’s challenge - to convince those people that he can be trusted in office and that he can please those who want to leave the European Union.”

Reality Check

Our Reality Check team has been taking a look at the most questionable figures that have come out of the election campaign - there have been quite a few to choose from!

They include:

• £1.2tn - that's the extra amount the Conservative Party said Labour would spend over the next five years
• £500m - that one came from Labour, who claimed a Conservative trade deal with the US would mean the NHS having to spend that much extra a week on drugs

Click here to read Reality Check's analysis of those figures, as well as four other controversial numbers.

Jon Ashworth, the man in the spotlight right now, appears to have been rather negative about Labour's electoral prospects - although he says he was only joking.

But what do the polls actually say? Check out our freshly updated poll tracker which measures how people say they are going to vote.

Norman Smith
Assistant political editor

It’s striking that in the dying embers of this campaign - which has been so carefully scripted and choreographed by the parties - suddenly events have burst into it and changed the dynamic.

Yesterday it was that photo of four-year-old Jack lying on a hospital floor. Today it's that recording of Jonathan Ashworth - by someone who was meant to be his friend.

They clearly knew his views of Jeremy Corbyn and basically it amounts to what looks like a sting - because the individual he was talking to is a Conservative activist.

Nevertheless, the remarks are out there and they are damning.

Here you have the man who is meant to be fronting Labour’s attack on the NHS basically saying they haven’t a hope of winning, that voters believe they blocked Brexit and they don’t like Jeremy Corbyn.

And, perhaps most damning of all, seeming to suggest that Mr Corbyn is a risk to national security.

So this is absolutely going to dominate the headlines today.

Events dear boy, events...

Image source, Getty Images

With polling day looming, we're reminding you of all the super-useful material we've written in the last few weeks aimed at helping you make your mind up.

Continuing our look at the manifesto guides we have for each party, the Conservatives have one over-arching message - to leave the EU with the government's renegotiated deal on 31 January.

However, among the party's other policies is a promise not to raise income tax, VAT or National Insurance, and to introduce a "points-based" immigration system.

You can read our full guide to their manifesto here.