The two main parties' election campaigns got under way today as the election bill was given royal assent, meaning the election is now officially on for 12 December.

The prime minister spent the day visiting a hospital, a school and a police station - while Jeremy Corbyn delivered an impassioned speech in London.

Mr Corbyn vowed to "transform" Britain by taking on "the few who run a corrupt system" as he kicked off his party's campaign alongside a shadow cabinet.

The party leader promised to "rebuild" public services and hit out at "tax dodgers, dodgy landlords, bad bosses and big polluters". He also promised to solve Brexit within six months of being elected.

But Prime Minister Boris Johnson blamed Mr Corbyn for the delay to Brexit.

He said he was "incredibly frustrated" that the 31 October deadline had to be extended, but a Conservative election win would remove the "logjam".

• You can read the full story of the day here
• You can read analysis from the BBC's political editor here
• You can read about female MPs and the abuse they have received here
• And, finally, you can read about John Bercow's final day as Speaker here

Conservative MP Maria Caulfield says she will run again for election despite receiving abuse every day.

She told the BBC she has had her tyres slashed, received pictures of beheaded babies and someone tried to run her off the road.

The MP for Lewes said: "Most of the time it washes over you, but some of it can be quite threatening, quite abusive."

She added: "I have decided to stand. I have thought about it really hard over the last few days. It was up in the air at some points because there have been difficult times."

Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan is one of more than 50 MPs who have announced they are standing down at the next general election - 18 of them are female.

Image source, Sheffield City Coiuncil

A confirmatory referendum is the only way to break the Brexit deadlock, a Green Party MEP has said.

Magid Magid - the former lord mayor of Sheffield who was elected to the EU Parliament for Yorkshire and Humber in May - thinks Boris Johnson is naive to think an election will end the stalemate.

Speaking to the PA news agency in Brussels, he said: "As much as people are seeing this as a proxy referendum it really, really isn't.

"It's a general election discussing general things like the NHS, austerity, the climate crisis. I think it will be a hung parliament on 12 December, we're still going to be in the same position."

He thinks the only way forward is for the next prime minister to bite the bullet and call a new referendum.

"It's painful. It really is painful but it's the honest thing to do.

"Nobody wants another but I can't see any other way out of this," he said.

Nick Boles, the MP for Grantham and Stamford, who was until earlier this year part of the Conservative Party, is standing down at the election.

His "last act", he says, is to form part of a cross-party group of MPs calling for the Ministry of Justice to review the current ban on assisted dying.

Image source, AFP

Jeremy Corbyn attempted an impersonation of Boris Johnson at his campaign event in Milton Keynes.

He said: "I don't know what the details are" - which he said was the prime minister's response when asked about the hospital refurbishments he had promised.

The Labour leader said Mr Johnson pledged refurbishment of 40 hospitals, but could not name one when quizzed.

Campaigner and businesswoman Gina Miller says she never anticipated "the toxicity" of the abuse she would get for bringing two legal challenges against the UK government’s Brexit strategy.

Mrs Miller successfully brought a legal challenge in 2017 forcing the government to seek Parliament's approval to trigger Article 50 - the legal mechanism taking the UK out of the EU.

Earlier this year she won a second case when the Supreme Court ruled that Prime Minister Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament was unlawful.

Watch the full interview with Stephen Sackur on Hardtalk on Thursday 31 October and Friday 1 November 2019 on BBC World News or watch again on BBC iPlayer (UK only)

After touring a hospital in Cambridge, the prime minister spent time at a primary school in Suffolk.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, AFP

Jeremy Corbyn has promised to begin rehousing the homeless "immediately" if Labour wins the December election.

Speaking to supporters in Milton Keynes - his third campaign event - Mr Corbyn called the number of homeless in the UK a "disgrace and insult to our country", and promised a Labour government would end austerity.

He said: "On our first day in office, we will immediately buy all the properties necessary to house the rough sleepers."

Andrew Sinclair
BBC Look East political correspondent

We can now report that the prime minister has been at the Abbots Green Primary Academy in Bury St Edmunds.

The PM joined a reception class where he made a firework collage telling the children “be careful with fireworks - animals don’t like them”.

After meeting the school’s team captains, he joined a year two class who were doing a project on London past and present.

He then went into a year three class, which was mummifying pumpkins, and appeared to baffle the children by talking about Ramses II.

Image source, Getty Images

Boris Johnson paid an election stop to a primary school in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, where he joined a group of children in an activity sorting pictures of London into past and present.

Mr Johnson held one black and white image aloft and suggested "past?".

One pupil agreed and said it "looks dirtier", to which the PM replied: "That was when Ken Livingstone was running it."

Referring to a photo of London Bridge, Mr Johnson told the youngsters: "You know what they used to do? They used to stick the decapitated heads of the enemies on spikes."

Broadcaster Michael Crick reports 19-year-old James Giles is to stand as an independent candidate at the upcoming election.

Should he win a seat, he would become the youngest MP of modern times - beating the SNP's Mhairi Black, who was 20 when she was elected in 2015.

But he would not be the youngest ever MP.

Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle, was 13 when he was elected as an MP in Devon in 1667.

Laura Kuenssberg
BBC political editor

Image source, EPA/ PA

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn do seem to be bound together by some similar traits - they are the political odd couple of 2019.

They've both been rebels in their own party, unwilling to toe the line, both with a habit of saying what they think.

That sounds pretty straightforward but, trust me, it's not always that common in politics.

And part of that habit of being direct has included very public criticisms of their party bosses before they made it to that perch themselves.

Whether that was Mr Corbyn's campaigning against the Iraq War and much of Tony Blair's government, or Boris Johnson's years of provoking David Cameron when he was king across the water in London's City Hall, long before he was lurking behind Theresa May's shoulder.

Both men have also been written off by their Westminster colleagues on plenty of occasions.

Read more from Laura here.

House of Commons
Parliament

The motion that proposed the six-month suspension of Leicester East MP Keith Vaz has been passed by MPs.

House of Commons
Parliament

Speaker John Bercow stops Mr Bridgen's speech to warn the MP to "show some sensitivity".

Mr Bridgen replies: "It is clear to me and it will be clear to the public that to the fag end of your tenure in that chair you are defending the indefensible and your very close relationship with the honourable member in question – the House can come to its own conclusions, the standards committee has come to its."

Mr Bercow, who is in his last day in the chair, says: "Let me say to the honourable gentleman - he can try to smear me, he will get the square root of nowhere.

"I’m friendly with a great many members having served in this place for 22 years.

"I do not get involved in matters appertaining to standards."

He says it is the committee that deals with this.

"I’m not trying to defend the conduct of the right honourable member, what I am doing… is defending colleagues, members of the public, the integrity of an independent process.

"If the honourable gentleman can’t or won’t grasp that fact, with the very greatest of respect to him, or such respect as I can muster, that says more about him than it does about me."

Do you know how to register to vote? Here are the details of what you need and where you need to go:

House of Commons
Parliament

Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen, whose complaint triggered the investigation into Mr Vaz, says he rises "more in sorrow than in anger to comment on these matters".

He says having read the report "there is no apology" and "no hint of apology" or of regret from Mr Vaz.

"He (Mr Vaz) is in complete denial," Mr Bridgen says.

"Leicester East deserves rather better," he says, referring to Mr Vaz's constituency, saying he is due to stand there again in December.