Life is a learning process, and I've much still to learn
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Version 0 of 1. This piece is simply an apology. It’s never easy being a politician in the limelight, and it shouldn’t be. We are asked all sorts of questions, from our taste in breakfast cereal to our thoughts on macroeconomic policy, and we’re always expected to have a well-informed and thought-through opinion. On Tuesday morning I gave a terrible interview on LBC – let’s not pretend it was anything else. If you cringed listening to the show, than I’m sure you can imagine what I felt like. We launched one aspect of our housing policy in early February. I was on top of the figures then, but I hadn’t looked at them since. When asked about the figures, my mind simply went blank. It’s easy to say that it “happens to everyone” but, on the day of our election launch, I should have made damn sure it didn’t happen to me. Listening back (which I’ve forced myself to do) I’ve found myself shouting at the radio. Illness didn’t help, but it isn’t any kind of excuse. The policy area in question was housing. We want to build half a million more homes, available at social rent levels, funded both by a change in tax-relief for landlords, and by fully lifting the artificial restrictions on councils borrowing against their assets. Related: Green party leader Natalie Bennett came unstuck by trying to be honest | Letters: Sara Parkin, Brian Wilson and Tim Daniel We estimate it will cost an extra £4.5bn a year. This would be a major investment in a national asset, which would create jobs and stabilise the economy. The policy is radical, it is different, but it is fully costed – and I failed to get that across. I’ve been the leader of the Green party for two and half years now. In that time our membership has soared, and in 2015 we’ll be standing more candidates than ever before. I can only apologise to party members, and indeed the many thousands of people up and down the country who are desperate to see a real alternative to the business-as-usual politics offered by the other parties. At the end of March we’ll be releasing our fully-costed manifesto. It will contain bold policies on transport, education and our economy. It will set out plans to redistribute the wealth and power in this country from those at the top to everyone else and it will explain how we’re going to pay for them. Yesterday morning reminded me that life is a learning process and that I have much still to learn. Unlike many other party leaders I haven’t been a politician for all that long. I’m willing to admit that this level of attention is a challenge, but it’s one that I can and will rise to. Never before in my lifetime have I seen such appetite for change in this country, and I have a duty to my party and to our 509 candidates in England and Wales to lead from the front. I’m not going to pretend I’m not upset about my performance, I am. But I’m also more determined than ever that the Green party’s policies get a fair hearing at this election. |