SO WHO WILL WIN ?

As election day approaches and the party's campaigns are wound up, only one question remains - who will win ?

6 weeks ago there was no doubt that the Conservatives were heading for a spectacular landslide victory. Labour were in total disarray and the Conservatives seemed to be riding the crest of a wave. However, things are now somewhat different and the opinion polls are giving a very mixed view of the likely outcome. What has happened ?

Firstly, Theresa May and her Conservative colleagues have run a distinctly lacklustre and rather messy campaign. They've put forward one or two policy proposals which seem to have been badly miscalculated and Mrs May no longer looks like the strong and steadfast leader that she was initially portrayed as and on which basis much of the early part of the campaign was fought. In the end, the damage to the Conservatives campaign hasn't been enormous, although their predicted share of the final vote has probably fallen by 4 or 5 percentage points.

On the other hand, Labour's campaign has been one of unashamed bribery. Populist policies and promises to increase spending on the NHS and on education, to abolish university tuition fees and to put more police officers on the streets have met with general approval from many traditional Labour supporters, as well as some others, and Jeremy Corbyn has usually cut a fairly sympathetic figure. All of this has contributed to the predicted share of the vote for Labour rising by 7 or 8 points, reducing the overall deficit to the Conservatives quite dramatically. The lead may now be down to somewhere in the region of 5 - 10 % and some pundits are even talking about a 'hung Parliament'.

While the campaigns started with Mrs May being the adored figure, they seem to be ending with Mr Corbyn having become the more appealing one of the 2; Tim Farron of the Liberal Democrats has gone largely unnoticed as have most of the other peripheral leaders. In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon's SNP seems to have lost a degree of support and may lose several of its seats, though it will still be easily the largest party in that part of the UK.

Will Corbyn's popular cuddliness and promises to throw vast quantities of our money at public services win the day or, when it comes to the crunch, will the electorate go for the less cuddly Mrs May and her distinctly less exciting but financially much more prudent approach ? For what it's worth, I think that sense will prevail and I predict an overall Conservative majority of about 60.

All will be revealed come Friday morning.