The main event: Scottish National Party outline policies

The Scottish National Party has set out its pitch to voters in Scotland - with a pledge to hold referendums on Brexit and an independent Scotland at the top of their list. Other key policies included scrapping the UK's Trident nuclear weapons system, freeing up billions of dollars to be spent on other priorities.

The SNP dominates elections in Scotland, which is the only part of the UK where it stands candidates, but even if it won all 59 seats up for grabs (as they nearly did in 2015) in Scotland the party would be nowhere near getting an overall majority in the UK (where the target is 325 MPs). SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has ruled out backing Boris Johnson in the event that no party wins a majority in the election on 12 December. She called him "dangerous and unfit for office." 

The electoon: Uses for old manifestos

The key campaign flashpoints

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn produced what he described as proof that the Conservatives would put at risk the future of the National Health Service (the UK's state-funded health system which provides treatment free when it is used). The documents covered preparatory meetings between UK and US officials ahead of official post-Brexit trade talks. According to Corbyn they showed that the NHS might have to pay more for some drugs as a result of a trade deal. But Boris Johnson - who was not prime minister at the time the meetings were held - called it "nonsense" and said Labour had only made the claim as an attempt to divert attention from the less-than-positive fallout from his BBC interview, which focused on his - and his party's - attitude to anti-Semitism.

Registering to vote

According to the Office for National Statistics, as of December 2018, around 45.8 million people were registered to vote in parliamentary elections.

More than 3 million people have also enrolled since the general election was announced at the end of October. Almost 67 percent of the new voters are under 35 and more than 1 million are under the age of 25.

On the last day before the deadline, 660,000 people applied to register to vote - the final figure might be slightly lower however, as some of those who have applied may already be registered.

UK election jargon explained: Psephologist

There are not many times in life where you hear the word psephologist. And to be fair, it's not a word that really needs to be used during election campaigns. But in case you come across someone wanting to show off their knowledge, the word basically refers to people who are experts in evaluation of election results of political opinion polls. According to the Collins  English Dictionary, the word itself comes from the Greek word for pebble - psephos - which is what the ancient Greeks used to cast their vote.