Nigel Farage is hitting out at the Mail and the Sun as he arrives in South Thanet

“My congratulations to the Daily Mail and the Sun. They’re geniuses; they understand politics brilliantly. They think the Ukip vote splits the Tory vote. God help us.”

A Tory source has said that it is still too tight to call in South Thanet.

Labour’s candidate Will Scobie was also reluctant to make predictions.

He said: “I haven’t seen enough of the boxes. They are all over the place. The thing is it’s so geographically-split that you could look at two boxes and they could tell you absolutely nothing.”