Britain's election campaign entered its frenetic final straight on Monday with Prime Minister Boris Johnson trying to lock in the votes needed to draw a line under years of arguments and paralysis over European Union membership.
Johnson is hoping Thursday's poll hands his ruling Conservatives a majority, to allow him to push through his Brexit divorce deal with Brussels.
Parliament has been deadlocked since the result of the last election in 2017, which saw the Tories lose their majority and weaken their ability to implement the result of the 2016 referendum on EU membership.
The main opposition Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn is trying to upset the odds and usher in Britain's first leftist government in nine years.
The veteran socialist has promised to negotiate his own EU divorce deal and then put it up for a vote in a new referendum that could still keep Britain partially tied to Europe -- or simply cancel Brexit outright.
Opinion polls show the Conservatives maintaining a healthy lead.
But Johnson needs to win at least half of the House of Commons seats because his party has no clear partners among the smaller parties.
Some polls suggest the vote could produce another hung parliament that extends Britain's political paralysis and further frustrates the business community and Brussels. "We're taking nothing for granted," Johnson said during a visit to a fish market in the northeastern port of Grimsby.
"We're working very, very hard across the whole country."
"We needed our politicians to be realistic about the scale of the challenge and either fund it accordingly or be honest about how far the extra funding would go," NHS executive Chris Hopson wrote in Monday's edition of The Times newspaper "That's not happened."
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