General Election 2019: What you need to know today

  • By ITV News Content Producer David Williams

You say you want a revolution?

Day 17 will see two more parties present themselves as fiscal firebrands, striking out to carve up new social and political ground.

First, Plaid Cymru will present its manifesto promising a £20 billion "green jobs revolution" to create tens of thousands of "green collar" jobs.

Then Nigel Farage will present his Brexit Party as the potential "new radicals" in Parliament. Their first act of rebellion is not even having a manifesto.

Instead, he will announce a "contract with the British people", including policies to cap migration, ditch the House of Lords and plant lots of trees.

It comes as reaction continues to what even Labour's rivals are accepting is one of the most radical manifesto pitches ever made to voters. This is what Robert Peston made of it. And here's Corbyn's claims fact-checked.

And here's ITV Tyne Tees' Martin Stew explaining Labour policy to a Labour candidate at a windswept mini-golf course.

Finally, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, Nicola Sturgeon and Jo Swinson will face audience questions on a BBC Question Time special in Sheffield.

Revolutions are famously never televised but ITV News will be sharing all the key speeches and campaign appearances as they happen throughout the day as part of our daily Campaign Live coverage.

You can follow all the key live events on itv.com/news Credit: ITV News

Here’s what's in store today:

  • Plaid Cymru launches its election manifesto in the village of Nantgarw near Caerphilly

  • The Brexit Party unveils its non-manifesto in Westminster

  • Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, Jo Swinson and Nicola Sturgeon appear on BBC Question Time Leaders' Special in Sheffield

  • Boris Johnson will campaign in the Midlands

  • Jeremy Corbyn will visit the Potteries

  • Jo Swinson will campaign in Glasgow before heading south

  • The SNP's Derek Mackay will campaign to promote the party's consumer-protection policies

Here's more on the election headlines:

The view from the campaigns

Paul Brand looks ahead to a busier day in the Conservative campaign culminating in a grilling for Boris Johnson.

Romilly Weeks said Jeremy Corbyn has more work to do on the campaign trail in the Midlands.

Rebecca Barry explains why the Lib Dem leader will be donning the hard hat and high-vis today.

Emma Murphy identifies the key themes in the Brexit Party's non-manifesto.

Calling Peston: The ITV News Election Podcast

Shehab and Daniel will dial in Robert for his thoughts every weekday of the campaign. Credit: ITV News

Robert dissects the Labour Party's manifesto from a car park in Birmingham in episode 12 and explains why he sees Jeremy Corbyn as an ageing rocker.

With Daniel having already quizzed Shehab on manifesto titles, the guys find out what Robert would call his own manifesto. But which one of the two does he appoint as his party deputy?

And finally, Libby Wiener takes centre stage to round-up the analysis on Labour's pitch to voters and give her own clear manifesto vision for Britain.

ITV News Political Correspondent Daniel Hewitt and Reporter Shehab Khan will be digesting the campaign every weekday - and dial in Robert to get his take on it all.

The Calling Peston podcast takes you behind the scenes of life reporting on the election campaign trail, hearing from our reporters on the road across the country.

The episodes appear each weekday at 5pm. Download it from wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Analysis: A manifesto of hope or a flight of fancy?

Jeremy Corbyn is out to prove his credibility on colossal spending plans. Credit: PA

Politicians live in fear of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, ITV News Business and Economics Editor Joel Hills.

Labour’s last manifesto, in 2017, barely survived first contact with the IFS’s economists who pointed to basic accounting errors and overly-optimistic assumptions.

Labour's latest offering, “a manifesto of hope”, needed to pass a key credibility test.

The scale of spending Labour proposes is colossal, even by the standards of 2017.

Hundreds of billions of pounds of extra public investment, paid for by borrowing. Enormous day to day spending increases paid for by tax rises of a similar magnitude.

Labour has clearly made an effort to present robust numbers and explain the thinking that lies behind them but the IFS still highlights credibility problems.

Read Joel's full analysis of the Labour manifesto spending.

Today's question: Will the 'volatile voter' be the key in this election?

The battleground we’re looking at is a slightly different one this time: not a geographical place but instead people themselves, writes ITV News National Editor Allegra Stratton.

We’re familiar with the idea of the ‘floating voter’ but now there are many more than ever before.

Professor Jane Green, ITV’s election analyst seen above on the laptop, shows us how since 2010 almost half of voters have voted in different ways from one election to the next. She calls this ‘voter volatility’.

In her crunching of the British Election Study, Professor Green has found the largest amount of switching in modern times - even more than when Tony Blair won his 1997 landslide.

This reached a high in 2015 when 43% cast their vote in that election totally differently from the election before.

At the last election, 2017, this was slightly down as people went back to vote for either the Tories or Labour. But even so, it was still high.

People are less and less likely to have a set go-to party they vote for time and time again - she calls this 'partisan dealignment' but I inelegantly call it 'the end of tribal politics'.

Read on as Allegra puts the theory to the test on the ground and watch her insightful report above.

Analysis: Who's signing up to vote? And who's not?

The uptake in applications has spiked several times since the Government called for an election on October 29. Credit: PA Graphics

The graph above is a promising sign for democracy.

It shows more than two million people have applied to register to vote since the General Election was announced.

A total of 2,048,039 applications were submitted between October 29 - the day the Government called for an election on December 12 - and November 19.

More than a third of applications (35%) came from people under the age of 25. A further 30% were from 25 to 34-year-olds. By contrast, just 5% came those aged 65 and over.

But figures published by the Electoral Commission this week show that an estimated 25% of black voters in Great Britain are currently not registered to vote along with 24% of Asian voters and 31% of people with mixed ethnicity.

This compares with a nationwide average of 17% who are not registered.

Read more analysis on the rush for registration ahead of Tuesday night's deadline.

And here's all you need to know about the five-minute step of registering to vote online.

The ITV Election Debate: Ask your question

The ITV Election Debate will be hosted by Julie Etchingham. Credit: ITV News

ITV will be broadcasting a seven-way election debate on Sunday 1 December.

Representatives from the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Brexit Party, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru will come together in 'The ITV Election Debate', hosted by Julie Etchingham and broadcast live from Greater Manchester.

If you would like the opportunity to put a question directly to all seven party representatives as part of our studio audience on the night, please follow the link here to provide some more information about yourself, and to submit your question.

Plus, as ever, here are your...

Here's the best of Thursday's campaign stories:

What's happening away from the election?

Here's what else is making the news today: