LIVERPOOL – Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green party, knows it has a problem with diversity. Last year, the Greens announced that they have 12 target seats. And every single candidate in those seats is white.
"We need to do a lot more about diversity," admits Bennett to BuzzFeed News at her party's spring conference in Liverpool – both in terms of gender and race as well as having candidates from a wide variety of backgrounds.
She notes in her party's defence that it's a problem for its rivals, too. Yet for the Greens, the issue of candidate selection reflects the wider differences between them and other parties, which make them such an unusual – and, to their critics, downright peculiar – force in British politics.
"That’s one of the problems you’ve got when you’ve got bottom-up processes that allow things to happen at a local level," she says. "From the centre you’d want to say we’d like to see all sorts of different things in this."
As part of a bottom-up process, she explains, local parties had to apply to be selected as one of the party's target seats, and were chosen based on a set of pre-existing criteria. The central party did set a target of having half of its candidates be female (the current figure stands at 39%). To encourage this, the Greens implemented rules which meant that if no woman put herself forward in the first round, the local group would have to reopen nominations. But Bennett stops short of explaining just how her party would enforce this.
In recent weeks, the gap between vision and execution has been a particular problem for Bennett and her party. In a radio interview with LBC last month, she announced a policy to introduce 500,000 new social rent homes – but couldn't recall how the party would pay for it.
That wasn't the only time she's failed to explain party policy properly. Not long after announcing that over-65s should have free social care, she was left flustered in an interview with the BBC.
When asked where it would apply, she replied: "England". In later questions, she said it would apply to both England and Wales.
During our interview at the weekend, Bennett is joined by a policy spokesperson for the party. This is wildly different from when BuzzFeed News interviewed Bennett in a juice bar last year, when she wasn't even joined by a press officer – as is standard practice for politicians.
Despite having focused on education policy in her speech – and despite the party's deputy leader, Amelia Womack, having committed the party to abolishing tuition fees for undergraduate degrees and cancelling student debts – she still has to rely on her adviser for help. Will university be free for EU students? "Yes," she says. "It will, I think, I believe, it has to apply to the EU. So once you make that [free] for the UK, it has to be for the EU."
And how about international students? Will universities decide their tuition fees? "Yes," she says insistently, before looking at the policy spokesperson. She then concedes that despite the announcement, the party doesn't yet know. "Well, I’m not sure. We’ll see what’s not in the manifesto. I’m not aware at the moment."
This is a recurring theme over the weekend. In her speech, Bennett said the party would propose a "Robin Hood tax": an additional tax rate for those who earn over £100,000. When asked about the specific rate, party spokespersons say it will be at least 50% but that the decision has not been finalised.
But the majority of party members appear to be fully behind her:
The result is a somewhat bizarre situation for the Greens. Under Bennett's leadership, membership has grown from 13,000 to over 55,000. And the party leader arrives five minutes late to her interview with BuzzFeed News because she's had to fight her way through swathes of fans who want to speak to her about party policy or take photos with her.
Indeed, while reports in the media suggested party members were furious with Bennett after the radio interview, the majority of members appear to be fully united behind her, despite the fact that she may well have put off potential voters.
Steven Campkin, the party's candidate in Ashford in 2010, points out to BuzzFeed News that on the day of the radio interview, the party actually saw a small spike in membership. This was noticed by a party member who created some buzz on the internal messaging forum when he pointed out that the party had gained 280 members that day, rather than the usual 100.
Campkin explained that Bennett's leadership wasn't at risk because "that's just how the Green party has always worked. We don't want one person to have all the attention." Former leader Caroline Lucas, the only Green party MP, stepped down "to give prominence to other party members".
In most parties, it's thought to be a good thing to have a confident speaker who attracted support. But the Greens aren't used to this attention. The day after her conference speech, which was met with a standing ovation, party members can even be heard discussing their discomfort with the fact that Bennett now had a certain level of celebrity status.
Yet only one member actively questions her leadership, arguing that Bennett's values might not be in line with the rest of the party. "I don't think she's always been a vegetarian," they say. "I think she used to eat meat."
Talking to BuzzFeed News, Bennett insists that her mission is to persuade voters that the Green agenda is the solution to what she describes as a "broken system".
What would the Greens do instead? "We need jobs and decent wages that people can build a life on," she says. "We need a £10-an-hour minimum wage by 2020. Also, decent benefits should be available to people who need them. It’s basically ensuring that we’re not a society where people live in fear of the food bank.
"As Amelia Womack said this morning – I thought it was a great line – Britain is known as much for its football as for its food banks. We don’t want to be like that and we shouldn’t have to be like that and saying that loudly and clearly."
Bennett's life has changed drastically in the last decade. Previously she was a journalist whose work revolved around telling other people's stories. Since becoming leader, she's been forced to reveal stories about her own past. Last month, for example, she told Sky News that she became a feminist aged 5 after she was told that girls weren't allowed to ride bicycles.
Back then, she enjoyed playing Lemonade Stand, a game where users had to buy supplies, create a recipe, and choose the price of lemonade on sale. "I didn’t realise at the time, but it was the perfect training in capitalism," she says.
She had a brief fling with Tetris, too, until she decided in her early twenties that she was wasting too much time on it. Now she doesn't play games. There certainly aren't any installed on her Fairphone Android device, protected by a 3D-printed case with a crowdsourced design. Instead she uses it to read the Financial Times. And the apps she uses most often? "My favourite app is London Transport, closely followed by National Rail, which I know are really really boring, but good for the practicalities of the when and where you’re getting there."
She misses the idea of a work-life balance, too: "Up until the last month or so, I used to bake a cake a week. I make a mean lemon polenta cake. I also do a rather good – but I don’t do it very often because you have to soak things for 12 hours – a rather good fruitcake.
"That’s rather nice, and gluten-free. I must get to that again."