Becky Smith took a shot of David Cameron in a Bristol branch of Nando's, which has since gone viral across the internet. Photograph: Becky Smith/PA

Becky Smith doesn't have any regrets about her selfie with David Cameron, yet the student who took it after he walked into her local branch of Nando's has revealed there was one particular thought pulsing through her mind at the time – "don't smile".

"My thought process was: 'I'm not smiling next to the man who I think is dismantling our country,'" Smith told the Guardian after her picture went viral following the prime minister's visit to the restaurant in Bristol.

Cameron is known for being unable to resist the lure of the selfie, having most famously posed for one last year alongside US president Barack Obama and Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the Danish prime minister, at a memoral service for Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg,

However, few of his photo partners have been quite so scathing about his political record as Smith, who tweeted the picture alongside the words "#snapapolitician lol".

Tuition fees are a particular sore point for the student, who said: "I was going to make a joke to him that we could all eat Nando's every day if we weren't paying as much as £9000 a year, but I didn't because I didn't want to ruin my friend's birthday."

Smith, a 20-year-old from Hythe in Hampshire studying French and history of art at Bristol, added: "My biggest problem at the moment with him is that he just doesn't care about representation of women at all. He doesn't care if he doesn't have many women in his front bench and he doesn't care if there is a lack of women in the cabinet."

Smith does concede that Cameron took time to have a "friendly and warm" chat with her friend whose birthday it was. If she has any regrets, it was that the picture appeared in the Daily Mail.

"Nobody on Twitter has had a go, but the Daily Mail comments section is different. They're all like, 'She's so immature,' and I'm like, 'Give me a break. I was having a laugh with my friends.'"