Just a few weeks ago we brought you the news of the unofficial Lib Dem Facebook group that was growing by 1,000 members an hour.

Now its members are enthusiastically promoting a series of flashmobs. There’s been one scheduled for London for some time, but I know many of us discounted going to that on the simple horror of getting to London on a bank holiday, whilst we should be shoving leaflets through letterboxes in our various provincial locations.

The prospect of a series of nationwide flashmobs, however, makes attendance just a little easier, no? Here’s the details from a thread in the facebook group:

Vicky Blake There is a growing number of Flashmobs!!! Please help us Tweet them and ATTEND ONE IF YOU CAN!! It will be a great chance to do consciousness raising and talk to people who get interested, to demonstrate support on the streets, cheer people up with yellowness and to meet fellow LibDemmers!

Paxo is currently finishing off Gordy, so let’s get out there and convince any remaining floating votes, convince wibblers that LibDems are the way to go, and help people who are on the fence between Lab/Lib and Lib/Con make an informed decision! If you can, after the Flashmob in yourarea, get to the local LibDem HQ and help them out with leaflets, canvassing, etc!

So far there are the following Flashmobs following the same basic plan (most are at 3pm but I think Manchester and Deby are slightly different and Derby is being finalised). Plese help the organisers of your most local one out if you possibly, possibly can!

#LibDemFlashmob

LONDON Flashmob: http://tinyurl.com/35bbwao

NEWCASTLE Flashmob: http://tinyurl.com/34m9lv6

GLASGOW Flashmob: http://tinyurl.com/363k5p2

MANCHESTER Flashmob: http://tinyurl.com/39v6384

DERBY Flashmob: http://tinyurl.com/35at3b3

BRISTOL Flashmob: http://tinyurl.com/33aztyw

And now also: BIRMINGHAM Flashmob: http://tinyurl.com/32ortwb

PLEASE TWEET AND RETWEET ALL on #libdemflashmob & other libdem hashtags!

Now. If only there were some way to channel all these enthusiastic flashmobbers into productive campaign activity… something like a minibus pressgang to shuttle the mobbers from their location to a Lib Dem HQ…

Not content with publishing a letter from leading progressives, the Guardian tonight brings to an end its journey to a decision about which party to support.

The article is here.

General election 2010: The liberal moment has come
If the Guardian had a vote it would be cast enthusiastically for the Liberal Democrats. But under our discredited electoral system some people may – hopefully for the last time – be forced to vote tactically

We can certainly commend them on their decision, and my headline shows my surprise at them taking this bold step. I think many people were expecting the paper to resurrect its “clothespeg” stance from 2005. But let’s not forget the paper ultimately almost endorsed the Liberal Democrats in the European elections last year.

Those who comment beneath the articles waver between enthusiastic endorsement of the paper’s stance, criticism at the length of time it has taken to take a decision, and appalled horror from the remaining Labour stalwarts in the comments thread.

On the Conservatives

The article takes some considerable time to praise efforts from the Conservatives to re-align their party with a British mainstream, to diversify and speak to the many people in this country who aren’t extreme right wingers, and most importantly of all, to ditch Thatcher’s legacy. But they conclude the process is far from complete:

[David Cameron’s] difficulty is not that he is the “same old Tory”. He isn’t. The problem is that his revolution has not translated adequately into detailed policies, and remains highly contradictory. He embraces liberal Britain yet protests that Britain is broken because of liberal values. He is eloquent about the overmighty state but proposes to rip up the Human Rights Act which is the surest weapon against it. He talks about a Britain that will play a constructive role in Europe while aligning the Tories in the European parliament with some of the continent’s wackier xenophobes. Behind the party leader’s own engagement with green issues there stands a significant section of his party that still regards global warming as a liberal conspiracy.

On the Labour party

The Guardian acknowledges – like many of us – that the Labour party has significant achievements from its time in office. But as the years go on, their failings become more apparent until they tip the scales away from Labour being a positive influence on our nation.

Invited to embrace five more years of a Labour government, and of Gordon Brown as prime minister, it is hard to feel enthusiasm. Labour’s kneejerk critics can sometimes sound like the People’s Front of Judea asking what the Romans have ever done for us. The salvation of the health service, major renovation of schools, the minimum wage, civil partnerships and the extension of protection for minority groups are heroic, not small achievements.

Yet, even among those who wish Labour well, the reservations constantly press in. Massive, necessary and in some cases transformational investment in public services insufficiently matched by calm and principled reform, sometimes needlessly entangled with the private sector. Recognition of gathering generational storms on pensions, public debt, housing and – until very recently – climate change not addressed by clear strategies and openness with the public about the consequences. The inadequately planned pursuit of two wars. A supposedly strong and morally focused foreign policy which remains trapped in the great-power, nuclear-weapon mentality, blindly uncritical of the United States, mealy-mouthed about Europe and tarnished by the shame of Iraq – still not apologised for.

On the Liberal Democrats

And as expected in an endorsement article, the paper reserves its warmest words for us.

[T]here is little doubt that in many areas of policy and tone, the Liberal Democrats have for some time most closely matched our own priorities and instincts. On political and constitutional change, they articulate and represent the change which is now so widely wanted. On civil liberty and criminal justice, they have remained true to liberal values and human rights in ways that the other parties, Labour more than the Tories in some respects, have not. They are less tied to reactionary and sectional class interests than either of the other parties.

The Liberal Democrats were green before the other parties and remain so. Their commitment to education is bred in the bone. So is their comfort with a European project which, for all its flaws, remains central to this country’s destiny. They are willing to contemplate a British defence policy without Trident renewal. They were right about Iraq, the biggest foreign policy judgment call of the past half-century, when Labour and the Tories were both catastrophically and stupidly wrong. They have resisted the rush to the overmighty centralised state when others have not. At key moments, when tough issues of press freedom have been at stake, they have been the first to rally in support. Above all, they believe in and stand for full, not semi-skimmed, electoral reform. And they have had a revelatory campaign. Trapped in the arid, name-calling two-party politics of the House of Commons, Nick Clegg has seldom had the chance to shine. Released into the daylight of equal debate, he has given the other two parties the fright of their lives.

Thank you, Guardian.

Welcome aboard.

Welcome to Lib Dem Voice’s coverage of the third televised debate between the three main party leaders, an event perhaps even more keenly anticpated than last week’s inaugural debate – though the viewing figures will almost certainly be fewer. As last week, we’re co-hosting live-chat, below, simultaneously with the Mark Reckons blog.

Leader Election Debate Live Chat – 3

Twitter has come alive in the last two hours with tweets and retweets of Labour’s new media Tsarina Kerry McCarthy, who appears to have attended a postal vote opening session in her constituency of Bristol East – and then tweeted her tally totals.

Just to be clear, this is illegal. You should not do it. If you are attending postal vote processing sessions or are an agent yourself, please make sure your entire team knows that anything you learn at that session cannot be shared.

Mark Pack has the full listing of the section of the law that applies in this case, but the main point is this:

66A Prohibition on publication of exit polls
(1) No person shall, in the case of an election to which this section applies, publish before the poll is closed–
(a) any statement relating to the way in which voters have voted at the election where that statement is (or might reasonably be taken to be) based on information given by voters after they have voted,

Kerry Mccarthy, whose website boasts she is a qualified solicitor, should have known better than to publish the information she learned. Indeed once she’d had a few minutes’ thinking time, she hastily deleted the original post. But not before it had been retweeted all over the internet.

This is a serious offence, from a qualified solicitor, experienced candidate and a former MP, and it needs to be taken seriously. If Kerry McCarthy is prosecuted and convicted, she could end up in prison for 6 months.

In the mean time, on a lighter note, Twitter is now speculating what the message would look like if Kerry was boasting about breaking other areas of election law – here and here.