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Green Party leader Natalie Bennett is receiving media training, following a car-crash interview with a London radio station which she has since admitted was “absolutely excruciating”.
Ms Bennett was left floundering during an interview with LBC radio presenter Nick Ferrari, after he asked how her party planed to deliver on a pledge to build 500,000 more social rent homes in the UK if it was elected.
Mr Ferrari’s response left Ms Bennett stumped after he asked her “Good lord, where would you get the money for that?” even though she said the policy was “fully costed”.
The incident marked a bumpy start to the Green Party’s pre-election efforts, and 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.
Baroness Jenny Jones, a Green Party Member of the London Assembly, told LBC radio today that Ms Bennett is working on her interview technique ahead of the party’s Spring Conference, which will marker her first public appearance since the infamous interview.
She added that the party received offers of help from people who do media training after the show aired, which Ms Bennett had accepted.
The party did not want to appear like the “slick, glossy insincere politicians that you sometimes see”, she went on, but admitted the party needs to better understand what the media requires.
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