Natalie Bennett: Green Party leader delivers 'car crash' performance on LBC dubbed 'worst party leader interview ever given'
Social media users have been unforgiving on a tough morning for the leader of the Greens
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Your support makes all the difference.The Green Party leader Natalie Bennett has given her second car crash interview in as many hours on LBC Radio, with listeners describing the performance as “a complete meltdown”, “extraordinarily bad” and “awkward beyond words”.
It represents a difficult start to the party’s official general election launch, which comes amid record polling figures and a huge recent surge in support.
After telling host Nick Ferrari that the Greens would build 500,000 new social rent homes, Ms Bennett appeared to be stumped by his response: “Good lord, where would you get the money for that? Despite saying the policy was “fully costed”, she struggled to explain how much money the homes would cost or where the money would come from beyond an unspecified amount from “mortgage relief from private landlords”.
After one particularly long pause she says: “As you can probably hear I have got a huge cold,” which may go some of the way to explaining her performance – dubbed by one Twitter user “the worst party leader interview ever given”.
It came after a difficult interview on Radio 4’s Today programme, in which Ms Bennett appeared to suggest that the West had to let Russia’s Vladimir Putin “walk away with something” from Ukraine if the crisis was to be resolved.
Even Greens supporters on Twitter called for a “calmer” performance from their leader, while others said she had an “absolute [night]mare”.
The party officially launched their election campaign today on a message of “hope” for the future on six key themes, including the NHS, public transport and of course climate change.
For the first time the Greens will be fielding candidates across around 90 per cent of parliamentary seats, and have seen a recent surge in membership to 54,000 matching record poll figures.
The party’s message has chimed with many, and away from the live interviews Ms Bennett was trailed as saying: “The old way of doing things is falling apart as the politics of hope triumphs over the politics of fear.
“The Green Party wants to create a political system that puts the public first and we believe we have the means to achieve that ambition.”
To hear more of Ms Bennett's LBC interview on their website, click here.
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