Exclusive - Labour PPC Abandons Front for Online War

Yes TB knows he is meant to be packing but a nice little scoop to leave on. This has come from a couple of places but people are being very cagey...

They are promising a "shock and awe" rejigging of their online activities in the new year, and tonight TB understands that the not entirely unattractive

Claire Hazelgrove

, 21, the PPC for Skipton and Ripon has been drafted in to jointly organise social media campaigning for the Labour Party. The prolific twitterer is so down with the kids that she even has a

Myspace page

! Other reasons for her employment seem to be she is on twitter and she votes Labour and she isn't as batshit crazy as Kerry.

TB understands that a handful of jobs have been offered and that the new Victoria St employees will be reporting directly to Sue Macmillan, Labour's... wait for it... "New Media Campaigns Taskforce Leader" and supporter of such brilliant campaigns like "

David Camera-on

" a Draper fake twitter account that was err mysteriously silenced, and redesigned. TB is still working on finding out who the other new recruits are.

Three things immediately come to mind about Hazelgrove's appointment. Firstly TB hopes that she has a better grasp of electoral law than she

once had

. She has been in

hot water

for attempting to send money raised in the UK to aid Barack Obama's election campaign, contravening election rules on both sides of the pond. Her flippant attitude at the time did her no favours. TB heard that Claire's involvement with the Obama campaign was a big plus for her getting the job. Though as far as he can tell she had little experience of running anything online and instead spent her time answering phones and

photocopying

in Virgina.

Secondly TB hopes Claire has sorted out her contact book. She was responsible for quite the blunder the other day that sent the labour net-roots into fits of ecstasy when she announced proudly that her sources at ComRes suggested a narrowing of the poll lead to just three points. The poll was announced later that night with a tory lead of 17%. Wounder.

Thirdly what do the voters of Skipton and Ripon feel about their PPC abandoning her campaign to join the party machine? Hazelgrove has been a part time PPC already after leaving university to move to London and her twitter page rarely mentions any reports from the front line.

An early Christmas present for

Julian Smith

then?

Claire Hazelgrove was unavailable for comment.