8 thoughts on the Natalie Bennett interviews
Natalie Bennett had what, by common consensus, was a couple of awful interviews on Tuesday – there’s no denying it. Nor was it helped by Jenny Jones then utterly stuffing up a press conference by stopping Bennett from answering questions, it seems.
But there are a few things worth saying:
1. Obviously it’s not great – but people don’t vote Green because of slick interviews. This is one slip-up in a very good year for the Greens so far.
2. Salmond and Farage both started out as party leaders in the early 90s – it takes a long time to get good at these things. All party leaders have had bad interviews in the past.
3. Why does the party issue generic press conferences to launch broad things like campaigns or manifestos? It’s our job to shape the agenda. We should make sure that the launch is about a specific issue “we are launching out campaign today by going to a Sure Start centre and talking about how we would invest in care”, for example. We’ve learnt this lesson the hard way before.
4. The first role of a leader is to lead. When Natalie took on the role in 2012, the party was stagnant. We’d never be where we are today without her clear strategy and leadership (see Adam Ramsay’s ‘The History of a Political Surge’). That’s much more important than how good she is at broadcast interviews. The surge wouldn’t have been anywhere near as strong without her.
5. The party now needs to move beyond this fast – pick a fight on some popular turf, make people feel like we’re on their team, so that when we’re attacked, they stick with us.
6. Specifically, the party has an answer to the question of how it would pay for more houses – by removing tax relief on mortgage interest for private landlords. This is a great idea (why are we giving tax breaks to buy to let landlords?). The party should be shouting this from the rooftops – paid for adverts in a couple of papers, perhaps…
7. The worst thing that party members and supporters could do is panic. The Green Party has grown hugely in recent months, and that’s put huge strain on staff and systems. There were always going to be mistakes. What matters is the ability to move on from them without squabbling.
8. This could be good for the Greens. Natalie’s apology in the afternoon to party members came across as brave, honest – and most of all, human. Not only that, but Green party membership grew on Tuesday the most it has for over two weeks, suggesting people kind of like our slightly less-than-professional image, or at least how we handled Tuesday’s débâcle.
Hmm.. Green issues, polticians seem hardly focussed upon them at the moment. Maybe these are really some of the biggest issues in the background. Maybe we might focus on the collective slip ups we have all been making for a very long time in relation to the earth we live as part of.
My suspicion is that the reason Natalie got bogged down in the detail is because that is how the Green Party works internally. To get noticed, to get elected, you will need to speak up in meetings, have strong arguments for your point and win the debate.
Overall I don’t think it matters much. The Green surge has little to do with our detailed programme for implementing our policies.
I don’t think the problem was that she didn’t have facts and figures to hand, but that she sought to respond on the terrain of technical explanation rather than take a political approach of conveying the big ideas.
I wrote something on this myself shortly afterwards – “The Housing Crisis is Real”
http://www.planetmagazine.org.uk/planet_extra/alt-ctr-del/the-housing-crisis-is-real/
Public speaking and interview expertise are one and the same. Media spin doctors make up and twist what is not there to enhance their own numbers of readers. One of the reasons I have yet to work for green candidates is i am eco-image maker. Integrity, ethics, values, and fire in the belly do not necessarily go hand in hand with astute compelling public rhetoric. Any astute politico can be trained to articulate and answer with straightforward responses colored with self-deprivation and the spice of humor. The goal is to heart-connect the ethical candidate/public servant to their audience (not the choir), be it in an interview with a snarky journo, a live rally, or a taped promo. The camera reveals truth to an audience if both the speaker and the listeners are intelligent and mindful. Policies and concepts really need to be explained in sound bites, staged and disseminated for education and maxi effect. Unfortunately, it seems the collective consciousness of the Greens is to think learning the trade (yes, it is craft) of how to reach the many is some kind of bad valueless idea. This is self and party sabotage. If Natalie Bennett spent time with a pro image maker she would learn how to brilliantly and simply articulate the ethical message to attract rather than promote the green philosophy for the greater good for civil society. There is no substitute for kindly political strategists and accomplished supporters who can help to translate the meek into the publicly strong and revered. The Green Party, no matter where it is sited, must begin to accept a working global premise of political success – that delivering compelling elegance in an honest pro-Earth pro-humanity message while being upfront are not exclusives to each other. Vociferous political leadership in women is slammed as strident in nature rather than smarty pants in skirts telling it like it is. This is a corrupt paradigm of public perception (via the status quo) where women are assigned to public awareness as either whores or mothers (madonna). This false narrowness is driven by piddle stream media circus performers directed themselves to reach for the lowest common denominator to generate hoopla for their corporate masters. The trick is not to manufacture a Manchurian candidate, rather take the enormous pool of compassion inside an intelligent emerging Green politico and shine it onto the world with clarity hobbled to thine own self be true glimmer. Now, I do not know Natalie personally, nor the operatives of the Scottish Green Party, but I am more than willing to help. Why volunteer? Earth is screaming. Our species is in the final 59th minute. We either stop the rigged game and move up the mountain banned together by love of life and integrity, or Homo sapiens will be excused from the planet. How do I know? I operate a bird observatory, plus I listen and learn with a honed watchfulness. Wildlife and wild places recorded in scientific field data provide a horrific measure of what our species is doing to ourselves and other living things. We all share one orbiting remarkable blue marble. You and I must extinguish the ruler’s myth of separation, end the economics of dirty oil and nukes, and at the same time no longer make machines for wars. Hope is not a dreamscape peopled by do-gooders banging their chests and tin cups. If the leaders of the Greens conduct themselves in perpetual solidarity (no matter what) standing behind the best and the brightest spokesmen and spokeswomen, the shift would turn into a revolution, and maybe a new religion. This is the ancient lurking nature of humankind during massive societal change we make sacred what saves us from ourselves. A fresh faith (read political/economic/environmental reality) based on oneness and compassion in the body politic is mandatory. An inherent understanding where our finest human role on Earth is to be gentle stewards of this paradise knowing to our core we are one with all life, may seem lofty – yet, I yammer it is the only viable way out of the empire’s morass of madness.
I’m afraid, Adam, that this is not ‘one slip-up’ but rather one of a series of dreadful slip-ups that started with Natalie’s interview on Sunday Politics a month ago. Back then I thought, “Oh no! That was really bad! But maybe she’ll learn something from this.” She HASN’T learnt from it. Rather she’s gone from bad to worse, and I think now enough is enough. Please, please someone take over the TV and radio interviews from her. I’m 61 years old and have voted Green all my life, against all the odds, and I can’t bear to see our best chance ever going down the drain because of such incompetence. She can’t even answer simple questions about headline Green policies. We campaigned very hard to get a voice in the media and this is our reward. It makes me sick to the stomach and I dread to think what might happen next if she’s interviewed again live on TV or Radio.
Show me an MP who says he has always had perfect interviews and I will show you a liar (though on that note…). The one thing that will pretty much always be a given for an MP I’d that they can’t give a straight answer, especially when it’s on the rare occasion of an unrehearsed question and the beauty of the the Green party is that they are honest and have integrity.
I have taken a lot of grief For my defence of (and had many arguments on behalf of) the party via Facebook and at no point has anyone given any kind of sensible argument against anything the Greens have to say, they ignore the fact that when judged on policies the Greens come out on top and of course there is the oh so tiresome argument of ‘look at the mess that was made in Brighton…’.
I personally think with regards to the LBC interview, until the interviewer started making pointless requests for as of yet unattainable figures (in my opinion, maybe the figures are there already), Natalie was giving a strong interview which showed a refreshing change of direction from the usual self serving ‘business as usual’ politics.
So if anything my resolve is stronger than ever and I hope with all my heart that people aren’t swayed by the media circus and vote on what they believe rather than spin.