General election: Party leaders cross country in final push for votes – as it happened

• Ahead of the first December general election in almost 100 years, Jeremy Corbyn said the Labour message “was getting through” and urged his supporters to knock on doors “like our life depends on it”. And taking a swipe at Boris Johnson, who retreated to a fridge in a Yorkshire dairy farm rather than facing questioning, the Labour leader added: “I don’t have to hide in a fridge when somebody comes to asks me a question.”

• Boris Johnson said the race was getting “tighter and tighter”, urging supporters they have a “national duty to find every vote to save our country from disaster”.

• Michel Barnier, the EU chief Brexit negotiator, said it would be “unrealistic” for the EU to negotiate a comprehensive trade deal with the UK by the end next year.

• Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said it had been “a privilege and honour” to lead the party during the election campaign.

• SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, who has been campaigning in Edinburgh, urged Scottish voters to back her party, saying that supporting others “risks helping the Tories”.

• Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage fears that a Conservative majority would see “Brexit sold out” and believes “we will be back in crisis by May next year as we face extension to the whole process, which has to be done by 1 July”.

• The Green Party promised that its MPs would respond to the “climate emergency alarm”.

• The Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price has called for a law to stop politicians lying to voters.

• The “presidential” nature of a campaign dominated by the leaders of the two largest parties has been illuminated by research that also reveals how Labour and the Conservatives have hidden away senior figures deemed to be embarrassing or “off message”.

Brandon Lewis, the security minister, told the Peston programme that Boris Johnson “has huge empathy and passion to see people get the very best service and care which is why he wants to increase funding for the NHS” following the furore of the prime minister initially refusing to look at a picture of an ill child lying on the floor at Leeds Infirmary.

John McDonnell told ITV’s Peston programme he believes Labour will win a majority or “form a minority government and implement our manifesto” without any pacts.

He cited the 2017 opinion polls which incorrectly predicted a huge Conservative majority.

More than three million women who believe they have been left out of pocket after steep increases to the state pension age have been promised compensation by Labour as part of a £58 billion scheme.

On the pledge and criticisms over the party’s manifesto on tackling poverty, shadow chancellor John McDonnell told the Peston programme: “That will be dealt with by progressive taxation. This is not about benefits, it is about entitlement.

“We are ending the benefits freeze, scrapping the Bedroom Tax, introducing a real living wage.”

John McDonnell has praised previous Labour government’s domestic policy on the Peston programme.

Liberal Democrats leader Jo Swinson has restated her position that her party would never enter a coalition with either the Conservatives or a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn.

She told ITV’s Peston programme that she could work with another Labour leader however.

Thursday’s Times leads on the threat posed by the Brexit Party.

Thurday’s Guardian front page

The Telegraph is focusing on a similar theme, saying the election is on a “knife edge”.

The Financial Times are splashing on polls suggesting the Conservatives’ majority of ten is narrowing.