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.

News from the Ashfield constituency, where yesterday I was delivering in a street with a most unusual name.

It appears that Labour’s parachute candidate, TV’s Gloria de Piero, is so frit of her lack of local links that she has pulled out of all hustings engagements, including a piece arranged by the regional TV slot of the Daily Politics.

Gloria De Piero had previously said she would attend hustings on the BBC politics show (25th April), a chamber of commerce breakfast hustings (22nd April), a Nottingham Evening Post hustings (28th April) and Sutton-in-Ashfield churches together hustings (29th April) but has now pulled out.

Liberal Democrat spokesman Stuart Bray said

“Labour are clearly running scared in Ashfield. Geoff Hoon’s antics have caused much anger locally and people feel let down.”

“Gloria De Piero had pledged to be open and accessible to local people but at the first opportunity that local residents had to question her she has chickened out. She has caused a storm in last weeks national press by refusing to talk to the media too. With her background as a London TV presenter surely she is not camera shy? What has she got to hide?

Read more on Ashfield Lib Dems website.

So, what feels like an age past, but was in fact only 10 days ago, we brought you news of a David Heath action figure dreamed up by some whizzy PR firm.

No doubt hoping to get a second bite at the cherry, they’ve hopped on the Cleggmobile to bring out a Lib Dem leader version of the publicity stunt.

It gets top billing on this blog post at NOTW who then try to outdo themselves with Nick-based puns around all sorts of other party merchandise they’ve found. Everything from Nick Clegg sunrise sneakers to a dog vest, in case your Highland terrier agrees with Nick too.

Totes, to ties, to t-shirts – your entire wardrobe can agree with Nick.

Of some passing interest is this little factoid that Politics Home press released last night:

In PoliticsHome’s weekly tracker, Nick Clegg has become the most popular politician in the country

Nick Clegg’s approval rating in PoliticsHome’s weekly tracker has risen by a massive 35 points in the week following the first leaders’ debate.

He has now overtaken Vince Cable to become the most popular politician in the country.

Where to start with the interestingness? Most popular politician in the country? A mixed acolade at best. Yeah, he’s popular, but he’s still one of those awful politicians.

Risen by a massive 35 points? Yeah, OK, impressive.

But beating Cable to the top spot of most popular politician in the nation? Priceless. Does that mean us lowly party wonks in the provinces – lowly on a national scale but unaccountably dobbed “TOP LIB DEM” in the local newspaper whenever we do something unexpected – stop having to answer the question about “You know, I would ‘ave voted for the Libs, but you should really ‘ave ‘ad Twinkletoes as your leader”.

There are, of course many good reasons why the Lib Dems in power would be in the interests of our nation, but some of the most intriguing yet have been outlined by David Yelland in a piece for the Guardian’s Comment is Free.

The piece has many telling details of how journalism works in this country these days, but the chilling conclusion of the piece is this:

Over the years the relationships between the media elite and the two main political parties have become closer and closer to the point where, now, one is indistinguishable from the other. Indeed, it is difficult not to think that the lunatics have stopped writing about the asylum and have actually taken it over.

We now live in an era when very serious men and women stay out of politics because our national discourse is conducted by populists with no interest in politics whatsoever. What we have in the UK is a coming together of the political elite and the media in a way that makes people outside London or outside those elites feel disenfranchised and powerless. But all that would go to pot if Clegg were able to somehow pull off his miracle. For he is untainted by it.

Just imagine the scene in many of our national newspaper newsrooms on the morning a Lib-Lab vote has kept the Tories out of office. “Who knows Clegg?” they would say.

There would be a resounding silence.

“Who can put in a call to Gordon?” another would cry.

You would hear a pin drop on the editorial floor.

Go read the whole piece here.

Challenge #1 – the electoral system

I nearly wrote this a few weeks ago, at which point it would have looked prophetic – writing it now just looks like I’m crowbarring it on the back of the rather sensational Yougov / Sun poll, news of which is breaking on Twitter.

Any number of people have taken the poll figures, Con: 33 (-4); Lab: 28 (-3); Lib Dem: 30 (+8), plugged them into UK Polling Report’s uniform swing calculator, and reeled, aghast at the revelation that our awful electoral system is so completely bust that it’s conceivable that the party that came third in the national vote might also win the most seats.

It is of course, something the Liberal Democrats, and the Liberals before that, have been banging on about for some considerable time. The system is broken. Almost all elections in recent history have delivered a party that diverges significantly from how people actually voted, and many millions of votes are cast for people who don’t win.

So, the challenge here would be turning the momentum of getting a third of the electorate to vote for us into a much wider campaign for that normally nerdy of pre-occupations, electoral reform. That issue which we still believe in, but which we almost never talk about for fear of watching the voters’ eyes glaze over.

Challenge #2 – joining the establishment

Much of the Lib Dem media narrative in recent years has been along “Labservative” lines. We are the outsiders. The other two parties are the establishment and we have been excluded. If only we were given a chance, we could show the world we’re amazing.

The problem with that, is that lots of other very small parties are also trying to make that same pitch, with the numbers changed a little bit. I’ve heard each of UKIP, the Greens, the BNP and the two nationalist parties on the radio over the last week making exactly the same point that the “three major parties” all agree on issues X, Y and Z and only us, in the smaller party can possibly have that true external, outsider, anti-establishment perspective.

The better the Liberal Democrats do, the more the argument swings in favour of the smaller parties. Which presents us a conundrum. Which would earn us more respect? We can continue to argue we’re the outsiders, or we can big our experience data. We’re smallest of the three main parties – but we also have a big, respected parliamentary team, and in local government, a quarter of the population of England and Wales live in areas led by the Liberal Democrats. Can we be both? And if this the general election which first sees Greens, BNP or UKIP members joining in the smaller parties in the House of Commons does that give us credibility for being a larger party or rob us our remaining rags of outsider status?

Challenge #3 – managing everyone’s expectations

This is another challenge that finds us arguing from a surprising place, for us. Normally, the general assumption is that we won’t do terribly well, and we have to argue like mad that we can win, that we can be important and that we can be relevant to our country’s future. Our own party’s activists have wildly over-optimistic expectations that we need to manage down, and the wider public have disproportionately low expectations that we

But after Clegg’s debate success, suddenly we find ourselves having to manage things rather the other way. Huge numbers of excitable members of the public are suddenly thinking we can win. Celebs on twitter, and the game changers on Facebook who got Rage Against the Machine to number 1 in the charts suddenly all think that we will be running the country after the next election, and it’s the sensible Lib Dem activists who are having to apply the brakes and murmur, steady on chaps!

Perhaps most importantly, we have to pace ourselves. There are still weeks left to go. True, postal votes will be arriving from Wednesday onwards, so we only have to preserve the momentum for less than a week to get the first batch of voters. But there are still weeks left of the race, and if we are to find ourselves surpassing expectation in the final furlong we need to keep our nerve and our pace along the way. Clegg did so well in the first debate – however will he fare in the second two? Can he possibly do as well again? Will both other party leaders manage expectations better even if they don’t manage to perform? Only time will tell.

Congratulations go from all at the Voice to David Ford, the leader of Alliance, the Northern Ireland sister party of the Liberal Democrats. The Northern Irish Assembly has voted David in as Justice Minister as other parties failed to find cross-community support.

The BBC reports

Before appointing a new minister, MLAs passed a vote to increase the number of devolved ministries at Stormont, to include the new Department of Justice.

Mr Ford will be in charge of the department with more than 4,000 employees and a budget of nearly £1.5bn.

He is the first Northern Ireland Justice minister since Westminster took policing powers away from the old Stormont government in 1972.

All best wishes for what could be a difficult but rewarding job!

Good morning and welcome to Daily View on this, the first day of the General Election.

As if we hadn’t all been at war footing for weeks anyway.

In history on April 6th, in 1869 celluloid was first patented, paving the way for commercial photography and cinematography. Every Youtube video you watch during the campaign will be thanks to the technology and techniques first pioneered on celluloid over 100 years ago.

On this day in 1895, Oscar Wilde was arrested for attempting to book into Chris Grayling’s B&B; in 1896, the first modern Olympic Games is held. It’s the day in 1917 when the United States declared war on Germany and the day in 1930 when Ghandi began the Salt Satyagraha which ultimately led to independence for India.

Today Rory Bremner turns 49 and Mylene Klaas turns 32 – my age.

2 Big Stories

Gordon Brown triggers general election

Most helpfully, the fact that Gordon Brown was planning to head off to see her Maj today to dissolve Parliament and trigger a general election was leaked to all the papers far enough in advance that they could run stories today, and not have to play catchup tomorrow.

Here’s the Guardian, who have also been leaked enough snippets of manifesto to get their clothespeg ready:

A draft of the manifesto seen by the Guardian pledges that an unprecedented fourth-term Labour government would be “bolder about the role of state intervention in markets” and deliver sweeping constitutional change. Failing police forces could be taken over by their neighbours under one radical proposal.

You’d have thought they wouldn’t want to mention the fact that there are any failing police forces after 13 years of glorious Labour rule. Or that any further constitutional change was necessary.

Rise of Lib Dems is worry for Cameron
For The Independent John Curtice reports:

The Liberal Democrats have edged up a point too since Vince Cable was widely thought to have emerged ahead in Channel 4′s Chancellors’ debate. The party is now at the 20 per cent mark for the first time since its party conference last September. Nick Clegg’s troops now look as though they will enter the election campaign in almost as strong a position as they started the 2005 contest.

Now all we have to do is spend the next four weeks making Cameron’s worry a reality.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

• Neil Stockley reveals the Lib Dem campaign narrative

The Lib Dems are using the archetype of “stopping the rot at the top”, inviting voters to cast a plague on both their houses – “they’re just as bad as each other”. This is the same narrative that the Liberals used in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1979 general election campaign, for instance, David Steel framed Labour and the Tories as “two Conservative parties”, one a failed government, the other a reactionary alternative.

• Campaign Digest

– From the creator of Lib Dem Voice comes this handy little website that pays attention to the general election e-campaign, so that the rest of us can concentrate on getting leaflets out.

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

Sign-up for LDV’s Daily Email

Don’t have time to read all of Lib Dem Voice? Keep missing the Golden Dozen? Well now you can have Lib Dem Voice headlines with cickable links sent directly to your inbox. To sign up just enter your email address here, tick the list you wish to you join, and click on ‘Subscribe’.

Make TODAY the day you donate to LDV’s Election Appeal

Lib Dem Voice is running a special appeal to raise funds for five of the party’s very best general elections candidates – all of whom have a real chance of winning but need your help NOW to ensure they do win. Click here to make a donation TODAY to help the Lib Dems build a fairer Britain.

How Authoritarian is your MP? Find out TODAY

Lib Dem Voice has put together 10 key Parliamentary votes to let you see how liberal or authoritarian your MP is. Click here, and just enter your postcode or the name of an MP or constituency, to find out their score. Pleased or appalled by what you find out about your MP? Please use the Twitter and Facebook links on the page for each MP to let others know how liberal or authoritarian your MP is. Here’s the link again: http://rank.libdemvoice.org/

Welcome to Daily View on this auspicious date, which in most Western cultures is considered a day of pranking and merriment. Of course we at LDV have no truck with such levity, and everything we write today is the honest truth.

Happy birthday to Gmail – 6 today!

2 Big Stories

Hadron Collider II planned for Circle Line

The Independent reports:

London Underground is in talks with the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) about the possibility of using the 23km tunnel of the Circle Line to house a new type of particle accelerator similar to the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.

One immediate benefit for passengers will be air-conditioning, installed to cool the huge superconducting electromagnets needed. Win-win!

Labour’s election strategy: bring on no-nonsense hard man Gordon Brown

The Guardian shares Labour’s latest ploy to win over the electorate:

In an audacious new election strategy, Labour is set to embrace Gordon Brown’s reputation for anger and physical aggression, presenting the prime minister as a hard man, unafraid of confrontation, who is willing to take on David Cameron in “a bare-knuckle fistfight for the future of Britain”, the Guardian has learned.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

• James Graham launches his VoteMatch app
• Lee Chalmers tackles sweeping generalisations

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

Sign-up for LDV’s Daily Email

Don’t have time to read all of Lib Dem Voice? Keep missing the Golden Dozen? Well now you can have Lib Dem Voice headlines with cickable links sent directly to your inbox. To sign up just enter your email address here, tick the list you wish to you join, and click on ‘Subscribe’.

Make TODAY the day you donate to LDV’s Election Appeal

Lib Dem Voice is running a special appeal to raise funds for five of the party’s very best general elections candidates – all of whom have a real chance of winning but need your help NOW to ensure they do win. Click here to make a donation TODAY to help the Lib Dems build a fairer Britain.

How Authoritarian is your MP? Find out TODAY

Lib Dem Voice has put together 10 key Parliamentary votes to let you see how liberal or authoritarian your MP is. Click here, and just enter your postcode or the name of an MP or constituency, to find out their score. Pleased or appalled by what you find out about your MP? Please use the Twitter and Facebook links on the page for each MP to let others know how liberal or authoritarian your MP is. Here’s the link again: http://rank.libdemvoice.org/

It’s lovely now! Go outside and do some leafleting!

But there is a storm coming later this week – my RSS feed of severe weather warnings tells me there are warnings in place for Tuesday from 2am to midnight for very heavy rain and even snow on high ground. So, for Tuesday, it might make sense to plan some indoor activity – preparing your leaflets, researching your stories and making some phone calls.

The warning appears to apply for from the Midlands and further north, Northern Ireland, but not Scotland, so key seats from Watford to Durham and Cardiff to Chesterfield need be warned.

Broadly, next month, temperatures will fall, and seasonal April showers can be expected (as if we hadn’t been having that already).

So some opportunity to work on your campaign tan, and the usual problem of trying to dodge showers and hailstones to get the soggy pieces of paper with Riso ink running down the page through the ever stiffer letterbox brushes. Bonne chance, activists.