Natalie Bennett has given a second terrible interview, this time to LBC on the topic of housing. (The first was on Citizen’s Income to the Sunday Politics.)
Yesterday’s mishap is terrible from both a content and a style point of view: content because she doesn’t appear to know basic numbers behind her party’s policy on housing; style because the pauses, coughs, erms, and “right, yes”-es don’t convey any confidence to listeners.
There’s another reason why this is terrible, though: the Green Party might have something different to say when it comes to politics. This is, after all, the reason why Bennett is being interviewed on LBC and the Daily Politics and why so many people are therefore aware of how badly her interviews are going. But we don’t know what it is the Green Party has to say because everyone is focusing on what a bad job they are doing in saying it.
Where does this leave us?
At the individual leve, I don’t know Bennett well enough to understand whether these interviews are just a blip or whether she isn’t necessarily cut out to be leader of a political party.
At the party level I can’t help but think that the Greens need more political professionals behind them – like strategists, media managers, policy people etc. – to try and get their house in order and prevent / minimise this type of thing happening again and again.
The irony, of course, is that whilst having more of these things might make them more effective it would also make them a bit more like the bigger political parties they’re currently the antidote to.
It’s a double-bind, and the quality of our political debate may be the worse for it.
arbitrary constant 