Natalie Bennett interview: ‘I’m not going to let a couple of males drown me out’
Last week Politics.co.uk sat down for a chat with Green Party leader Natalie Bennett. We talked about the 'Green surge", the party's manifesto promises and her plans for the future. You can watch highlights from our interview above. Bennett also discussed with us:
Her 'brain fade' during an LBC interview.
"Basically i was just at that moment I was probably too ill I shouldn't have been doing it. I did it anyway and basically the surge of adrenalin hit my brain and it emptied."
On shouting over Ed Miliband during the leaders' debate
"What had happened was David Dimbleby had indicated it was my turn to speak and I had been chosen as the person to speak and both of them [Farage and Miliband] kept talking and I felt at that point that I didn't have entire confidence that the chair was going to let me back in and so that was my way of saying that it was my turn to speak and I'm not going to let a couple of males to just keep talking and use their loud voices to drown me out."
On the photo of Natalie and others leaving Nigel Farage alone on stage
"It wasn't particularly deliberate. The geography of the stage was that we all wanted to go and talk to the audience and I don't think he did. I don't actually know what happened behind my back but my impression is that he didn't come and talk to the audience… and I think Nigel Farage had just left by that point. So it wasn't a big deliberate action. It just worked out that way."
Good pic. "@MirrorPolitics: Lonely, Nigel? Farage left hanging… after debate http://t.co/1KZayQC6l7 pic.twitter.com/wq4NeUbmTL"
— Claire M Benson (@PyroClaire) April 17, 2015
On banning GM crops. Isn't this "anti-science"?
"The whole issue about GM is much bigger than simply the science… This is a technology that is controlled by a handful of big multinational agrochemical companies. So there's a real issue about who is controlling this technology. And this is also very much the technology of large-scale industrial agriculture and monoculture and if you travel through the English countryside you see endless fields of rapeseed plants and it looks beautiful and you think isn't nature lovely? But what you're basically looking at there is biological deserts. You're looking at huge amounts of chemical use… And there is also safety issues and the concern that people don't actually want to eat these crops and people should have a choice."
Politics.co.uk: But if you ban them people don't have that choice.
"The problem is you have issues of contamination and once you've let this out into the environment and the gene out of the bottle you can't put it back in."
On banning the sale of lads magazines in shops.
"It's one part about concern about violence against women and images that people find disturbing. And we're not saying ban this for people in private choosing to read that but it's whether it's in your face and you have no choice. What we're saying is people should be protected from being confronted with this when they go in to buy their local newspaper and this hits them in the face… We want to see restrictions."
The end of the campaign.
"I admit that I'm counting down and looking forward to a nice long sleep."
