General election 2019: The campaign as it happened - BBC News
Updates with the election ten days away, including some of the pledges from the smaller parties.
It’s an old story but I’ll tell it anyway.

During the 1964 general election campaign Harold Wilson was trumpeting his support for the navy at a vast public meeting in the dockyard town of Chatham.

“And why am I saying all this?" he asked rhetorically. "Because you're in Chatham!” shouted a voice from the crowd.

A famously fine heckle from an era where prime ministers had to contend with the electorate face to face. They still do from behind their TV studio podiums of course but the public meeting and town centre walkabout has mostly gone.

We’re 10 days from polling day and from my perch in the Tory campaign I’ve yet to hear a heckle. Not one.

Today Boris Johnson turned up at a deserted cruise liner terminal at Southampton docks to plug his party’s policies for border control after Brexit.

He chugged around the quiet port in a boat and did a quick television interview on his response to Friday’s terror attack before heading off to a rally for Tory activists this evening.

The PM was in and out before the city’s voters twigged he was there. It’s the same wherever Mr Johnson goes.

The Conservative campaign feels efficient, focused and sterile. Clips for broadcasters are provided, Tory social media content is recorded and pictures of the prime minister in different bits of Britain are taken that will appear online and in tomorrow’s newspapers.

But spontaneous encounters between the PM and the general public hardly ever happen.

It’s now impossible to imagine Boris Johnson copying John Major’s 1992 campaign and plunging into the crowd to argue his case.

During the 2016 referendum, Mr Johnson seemed to relish the chaotic cut and thrust of town to town campaigning but there’s none of that now.

The Tory battle bus still ploughs up and down the country’s motorways carrying the media from one event to the next but it feels the real electioneering is happening somewhere else.