Young, erudite and opinionated, 20-year-old Ellie Gellard must have seemed the ideal person to introduce Gordon Brown at Labour's manifesto launch in Birmingham yesterday.
She told the gathering how the election would be fought not just through traditional mediums like posters and TV, but via blogs, YouTube and Twitter. "We are asking our supporters not just to have a look at our manifesto but to share it with their friends and we're making it easier than ever to do so."
And it would all have seemed very much in keeping with a future fair for all – had she not expressed such strong views about Brown in the past.
Gellard, a prolific Tweeter under the name @BevaniteEllie and who writes a blog called The Stilettoed Socialist, put the boot into Brown after the party crashed to defeat in the Glasgow East byelection in 2008.
Unsurprisingly, that didn't feature in her address yesterday, but it didn't take long for her musings on the prime minister to be spinning round the web.
In 2008 she said Labour had failed to "champion the poor and 'normal' rather than the super-rich". "How dare he stand by with personal interest watching our party sink. It is not his to lose – it is ours." She went on to describe her "ideal scenario" in which Brown stood down, recognising that the party had been badly damaged, and Alan Johnson took over.
"In short, Brown (although I had high hopes and don't burden you with total responsibility), get your coat: time's up," she said.
