[Unidentified Female:] No, I don't know.
[Becky Anderson, Cnn:] This hour, all roads lead to uncertainty. Britain just hours away from a once in a lifetime vote that will set the stage for generations to come. Plus it's going to be a long, long night in Washington as lawmakers from both sides pitch against one another to discuss the charges of high crimes and misdemeanors against the U.S. President. And
[Unidentified Male:] That menacing ash cloud started to roll over the cliff and engulf the island.
[Anderson:] We meet a man who barely scraped away from an erupting volcano in New Zealand. It's 7:00 p.m. here in Abu Dhabi, 10:00 in the morning in D.C., it's 3:00 in the afternoon in London. A very warm welcome to your extended CONNECT THE WORLD show with me, Becky Anderson. The big story this hour, almost everything you know about the U.K. could be about to change. The way it works with the world, its economy and who lives there and why. As we are in the final day of campaigning for an election that is going from the balmy to the downright shocking. And with so much at stake, the men who want to be the next Prime Minister are going all in on one last push to get their parties over the line. Boris Johnson's Conservative Party is still comfortably ahead in the latest polling. Jeremy Corbyn's opposition Labour Party is closing that gap hard and fast. It really could go any way on Thursday. And the pressure seems to be making things, well, just a little bizarre. Just hours ago, the Prime Minister apparently dodging a reporter's question about appearing on the morning TV show and then seeming to run off to take cover in a milk truck. Have a look at this.
[Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister:] Come on. Very good.
[Unidentified Male:] Tell me sir, will you deliver on your policy
[Johnson:] Of course I will. Thank you very much. Put that right there.
[Anderson:] Well this after an election that no one seems to have wanted in the first place except perhaps Boris Johnson himself. CNN's Matthew Chance starts us off this hour with two of the most marginal seats in the country to find out who, if any of the candidates, can win voters over. Have a look at this.
[Matthew Chance, Cnn Senior International Correspondent:] Welcome to Dudley in the English Midlands where ancient traditions are being overturned. Don't worry, the old town crier is still going strong but the overwhelmingly Brexit supporting locals are questioning long-held political allegiances thinking of voting for the other side.
[Unidentified Male:] I would possibly vote Conservative now.
[Chance:] Conservative?
[Unidentified Male:] Yes.
[Chance:] This is a traditional Labour place.
[Unidentified Male:] Yes, I know it is. But I would vote Conservative at the moment now. I'm going to change.
[Unidentified Female:] I've always voted Labour. I've always voted, but now I don't know.
[Chance:] What's making you you've always voted Labour. What's making you hesitant for voting Labour this time?
[Unidentified Female:] I don't know if Jeremy Corbyn is up to the job.
[Chance:] And it's not just the voters here turning their backs on Labour. In a local pub, we met the area's former Labour MP now urging the people of Dudley to vote Conservative.
[Ian Austin, Former British Labour Mp:] For the first time in my life, I've decided to vote for Conservatives. And I did that because I think that Jeremy Corbyn is not fit to run our country. And I don't think he can be trusted to defend our country. I don't think he's a patriot.
[Chance:] It's a big step to take, isn't it? I mean, for people around the world watching this changing support from Labour to Conservative is huge. Isn't it?
[Austin:] It's a massive thing. I join the Labour party at the age of 18 35 years ago here in Dudley. I've never been a member of any other political party. I've never voted for anybody else until this year, I could never have managed that this would happen.
[Chance:] What's happening in this constituency of Dudley is also taking place across the country. Brexit, disillusionment with politics and politicians are turning traditional party loyalties upside down making this British general election particularly tough to fight and hard to predict. [voice-over]: And, of course, the changes cut in all directions. Take the suburb of Kingston outside London where a mixture of disillusionment and anger at Brexit among remain voting locals like Rick the barber is threatening a long-held Conservative Party majority.
[Rick, Barber:] I'm not going to vote. I won't be voting, no.
[Chance:] Why?
[Rick:] I won't be voting because I don't agree with any of I think it's all corrupt. And whoever we vote for I don't even count it anyway. That's my view.
[Chance:] Are there any politicians in Britain that you think deserve your vote?
[Rick:] No.
[Chance:] No? No one? Boris Johnson?
[Rick:] Nope.
[Unidentified Female:] This year I'm changing because I heard it wasn't happening about the leadership.
[Chance:] It's a mood the local Labour candidate hopes she can turn her way in an area once represented by Winston Churchill himself, the doyenne of British Conservative leaders. She admits she's facing an uphill struggle to engage voters at all, especially in the dark winter months of this election campaign. [on camera]: To what extent are you hearing mad on the doorstep.
[Faiza Shaheen, U.k. Labour Candidate For Chingford And Woodford Green:] A lot of people are disillusioned with politics right now. And I don't blame them. You know, I think there's a lot of mistrust and they've seen so much misinformation and lies. People are really struggling to see who they can trust in this world.
[Chance:] And who in this most consequential British election deserves their vote. Matthew chance, CNN, London.
[Anderson:] Well CNN will have extensive coverage of the election in the hours ahead. Our reporters found out across the British Isles. This hour we get the story in Edinburgh and Scotland with Scott McLean and on some of the dirty tricks of the campaign, Hadas Gold standing by in London for you. And I'm delighted to welcome back to CNN a man who has forgotten more about British politics than many of us will ever know. He's taught me everything I know about British politics, Mr. Robin Oakley, our political analyst. Let's start with the story, if we can, at the top of the country as it were or the British Isles, and Edinburgh in Scotland, what's the story there Scott?
[Scott Mclean, Cnn Correspondent:] Hey, Becky. The battle lines in Scotland are much less about party and more about Brexit and Scottish independence. That dynamic is more likely to benefit Conservatives in the Scottish National Party squeezing out Labour and Liberal Democrats. Even Liberal Democrat leader Joe Swinson is facing a serious challenge for her own seat.
[Unidentified Female:] Jean, why don't you go with four and I'll go to number two and Tom you can do five.
[Mclean:] At 27, Amy Callahan is young for political standards but has no shortage of life experience. The Scottish National Party candidate in suburban Glasgow has had to fight for her own twice. At age 19, she had a cancerous lump removed from her cheek. It came back two years later. She was treated by Britain's Public Health System, the
[Nhs. Amy Callahan, Scottish National Party Candidate:] My experience with cancer has only spurred a desire to make sure NHS is protected. And I'm not silent here as a candidate for the Scottish National Party. Five years cancer-free because of what NHS has done for me.
[Mclean:] It saved your life?
[Callahan:] Yes, it saved my life twice.
[Mclean:] In this election, though, Callahan has another uphill battle against Liberal Democrat leader Joe Swinson. Political heavy with the advantage of a national profile and 12 years as the MP for East Dunbartonshire. But she's been beat once before.
[Callahan:] No one has got a divine right to a seat here. You need to earn that right.
[Mclean:] From the outset of the campaign 39-year-old Swinson set her sights on Number 10. Boldness dwarfed only by her party's central campaign promise to cancel Brexit without a second referendum. After a strong start in the polls, Liberal Democrats have been on a steady slide. Katie Gordon is Swinson's longtime local campaign manager. She remembers how it felt to lose the seat in 2015 and to win it back two years later.
[Katy Gordon, Liberal Democrat Campaign Chair, East Dunbartonshire:] This time I'd say it's somewhere between the two. You know, there's warm support. There's also a lot of people fundamentally motivated by independents.
[Mclean:] Independents has transformed Scotland from reliantly Labour red to S&P yellow. Conservatives have since made inroads but Liberal Democrats who oppose a second independence vote have felt the squeeze.
[Gordon:] So if you have one dividing line that's about, you know, your loyalties to deal with independence or not, and then you have another dividing line about leave or remain in Europe, and so it's much harder to predict these days, I think.
[Mclean:] On the High Street in Kirk and Tele we found another dividing line when we asked [on camera]: how do you feel about Jo Swinson?
[Unidentified Male:] I cannot stand her personally.
[Unidentified Female:] Really.
[Unidentified Male:] Not a nice person. Doesn't deserve to be in power in any way shape or form.
[Unidentified Female:] So 17.4 million people who voted to leave would have no voice. So no, I won't be voting Lib Dem. She's not done much for this end. They say you're fine if you are for her at the other end of East Dunbartonshire in the very affluent end.
[Mclean:] But even seven miles west we found kind words.
[Unidentified Female:] She's been an excellent MP for the area.
[Mclean:] But not a lot of votes.
[Unidentified Female:] Jo Swinson, she started well but some of the things she said, like Article 50 revoking. I don't think she's got a good grip at the moment. She's lost the floor completely. I used to vote for her, but I don't anymore because I think she's just become too extreme.
[Mclean:] In Scotland, there are no safe seats, not even it seems for a national party leader. Now Jo Swinson is wrapping up her campaign in Conservative held parts of London. Meanwhile, the Scottish National Party currently holds 35 of the 59 seats near Scotland. Obviously, they would like to win more, but the former Scottish Conservative leader has promised to skinny-dip in Loch Ness if the party wins more than 50 seats Becky.
[Anderson:] Hadas, the Lib Dems not likely to win this by any stretch of the imagination, but there are appeals for tactical voting. Which may be one of the reasons we're seeing a narrowing in the polls between the two major parties that of Boris Johnson and his Conservatives and indeed the Labour Party run by Jeremy Corbyn. And if we thought that this campaign would be clean, well we were entirely wrong.
[Hadas Gold, Cnn Reporter, European Politics, Media And Business:] Yes, Becky, that's true. Campaign tricks are as old as a campaign buttons or slogans. But this election in particular has been very, very dirty. Some experts I've spoken to said that it's the dirtiest campaign they've seen. Especially when it comes to online information. So here are some of my top dirtiest tricks of the U.K. election. The first is the fake fact-checking Twitter account we saw from the Conservatives during the first live debate. They changed their party press account to make it look like a fact-checking account. The second is selectively edited videos on social media. This is for example, like we saw the video where it seemed as though Keir Starmer, the Labour Brexit secretary was not able to answer a question in an interview. When in fact, he did answer the question in the interview completely. Then we have the anonymous misleading briefings. This is when you get briefings from senior government sources or senior political sources to reporters. Reporters then get put that information online but it might not turn out to be true. We might see that later on the story is totally different. We've seen campaign pamphlets that look exactly like the local newspapers. These are pretty much fake newspapers. It might be hard to tell at first glance but they're campaign pamphlets. And then of course the classic dodging of the interviews or dodging a debate. We saw from Prime Minister Boris Johnson who failed to show up to the climate change debate by channel 4. And I think what these issues, especially around social media show, is that it's a wild west when it comes to online. Though we have regulations in the U.K. around for example political ads on broadcast, there are absolutely no rules or regulations when it comes to online. And all of the political parties, nobody has clean hands in this election when it comes to posting or using potentially misleading information online. And especially because these regulations can continue through polling day, the experts I've spoken to say the next few hours will be especially important to be vigilant about the information that people see online.
[Anderson:] Robin, we care about this election, not least because the outcome will effectively decide Brexit. Which, of course, is the biggest issue in at least a generation, facing not just the Brits, but Europe. So what's the latest polling suggesting at this point?
[Robin Oakley, Cnn Political Analyst:] Well, the latest polling is suggesting it's getting a little bit closer. Early polling for most of the campaign, it appeared the Conservatives had a lead of 10 or 12 points over Labour. That seems to be squeezed a little bit. A little bit of tactical voting coming in. The Tories, the Conservatives have a lead of 10 or 12 points over Labour. That seems to be squeezed a little bit, a little bit of tactical voting coming in. The Tories are clearly worried that those polls will have made some of their own voters complacent. And some of the ones who voted remain in the referendum who don't like Boris Johnson's line on Brexit and have been tempted to vote Lib Dem, they're trying to bring them back into the Conservative fold by saying that a vote for anyone except Boris Johnson could put Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street. The thing is Boris Johnson has got to win a decent majority in order to be able to push through Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn, he doesn't have to win a majority necessarily to finish up at number 10 Downing Street because he could get help at a price from the Scottish National Party or indeed from the Liberal Democrats.
[Anderson:] This campaign began with reports of Russia trying to wield influence in U.K. politics. Now we see all the hallmarks of election meddling, fake news, social media and leaked documents linked to Russia. I can't now remember how many elections you've covered, but what do you make of all of this and who are you betting on at this point should you be a betting man?
[Oakley:] I think this is the most mendacious, dispiriting, depressing election I've covered and this is the 14th I think, Becky, actually. And there have been so many lies on both sides. The promises being made by the two major parties to a large extent unbelievable and both major parties, Conservative and Labour, have narrowed themselves into narrow sects of the faithful. When they both used to be broad-based parties with room for a range of opinions. That is completely gone in this election. It's a result largely on Brexit. And Brexit is now the biggest determinant I think of people's voting intentions. The tribal element in voting has gone. And of course, that's what Boris Johnson is counting on. He's hoping that he can breach the so-called red wall. That he can pick up Labour traditional Labour seats in the midlands and the north and in Wales on the grounds that a number of those seats were heavy supporters of leave in the referendum campaign in 2016. He's hoping that he can bring those people across. But will it happen when they finally get into the ballot box at the last moment. Will people who have traditionally vote forward one party all their lives, will they say, oh, you know, Brexit is the most important thing or will they revert to their traditional loyalties? That's a big question Becky.
[Anderson:] This was an election that Boris Johnson said nobody wanted. Sort of slightly slyly because many people said it's the election that Boris Johnson absolutely wanted. Whether he will get the result that he hoped for we will know in the hours to come. Thank you, guys. CNN is where it's at for the latest on what is this crucial U.K. election. We'll have special coverage on Thursday as the polls close. That starts just around 10:00 p.m. London time. Impeachment efforts against U.S. President Donald Trump move full steam ahead. What you need to know before the public debate in Congress on the charges against the president. That's next. \