Election 2015: Leaders in last-ditch bid for votes

Election 2015: Leaders in last-ditch bid for votes

Party leaders and candidates are making a last-ditch grab for votes on the final day of campaigning before the general election polls open.

Mr Cameron campaigned until late on Tuesday night as the contest enters the final furlong – Photos: PA

Prime Minister David Cameron said the country was "stronger than it was five years ago" but there was "more to do".

Ed Miliband will say Labour would put "working people first" in government while Nick Clegg will say the Lib Dems will offer "stability and decency".

Polls suggest no party will win enough seats for an outright majority.

BBC deputy political editor James Landale said politicians, pollsters and the media were struggling to read the election, leading many to focus on what might happen if there is an uncertain result.

"As such, Thursday might not be the end of the process," he said. "It might just be the calling of the half-time whistle."

The leaders have been criss-crossing the country in their battle buses as they attempt to drum up support ahead of Thursday's poll.

Mr Cameron is heading to north-west England, Scotland and the Midlands, while Mr Miliband is visiting Conservative-held marginal seats in the north of England.

Mr Clegg, who set off from Land's End on Tuesday, is heading to John O'Groats through Scottish constituencies his party is hoping to retain.

The prime minister, whose Conservative Party won 307 seats in 2010, has renewed his attack on the possibility of a minority Labour government propped up by the Scottish National Party (SNP), saying it would face "huge questions of credibility".

Mr Cameron insisted a Conservative victory was "within reach" but insisted that he would put "the country first" whatever the outcome of Thursday's poll by working to provide "strong and stable" government.

While Nick Clegg is continuing his 1,000-mile tour from Land's End to John O'Groats

The Conservative leader said he had achieved a lot since 2010 but was "not satisfied" with current levels of deprivation and educational under-achievement in parts of the country and wanted to push harder on welfare and schools reforms.

"Is our country stronger than it was five years ago? Yes," he told BBC Radio 4's Today. "Is there more to do? Yes. But I would say stick with the team that is turning things around."

Mr Miliband is looking to improve on the 258 seats Labour won in 2010 under the leadership of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

He will say voters face a "clear choice" between "a government that puts working people first, or one that works for the privileged few".

Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman said "people at the top had done very nicely" over the past five years while everyone else was struggling.

She said Labour could still win what she described as a "watershed election" for the NHS: "I don't think it will survive as people want it to survive, and need it to survive, under the Tories."

Mr Clegg, whose Liberal Democrats are battling to keep hold of the 57 seats they won five years ago, will visit marginal Scottish seats under threat from the SNP, telling voters: "You face the biggest political decision of your life."

He has sought to position his party as keeping any future coalition government "anchored" in the centre ground.

Without the Lib Dems, he will say, "Labour or the Conservatives will be left to run a messy and unstable minority government, dependent on the SNP on the one hand or UKIP and the DUP on the other".

The SNP's Nicola Sturgeon, who has dominated many of the headlines of this campaign and is forecast to take a number of seats from Labour in Scotland, will make her final speech in Edinburgh later.

Speaking on BBC Newsnight, UKIP's Mark Reckless, one of two former Conservative MPs to defect to Nigel Farage's party in the last parliament, said he would be disappointed if UKIP did not win "four or five" seats.

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, whose party is looking to add to the one seat it won in 2010, will make a speech in Bristol where she will stress her determination to "keep the Tories out of government and keep Labour in line".

Source: BBC