[laughs]

And we've always acknowledged that.

And so for example, um, uh, if you look back to the coverage of my 2015 party conference respee- speech for the Green Party, leading with the National Care Service was absolutely what I was m- majoring on in 2015.

So absolutely great.

We really celebrate that.

There's so many areas in which Green Party policy, you know, 10 years before we say it and people say, "Oh, that's a radical idea, and you can't do that," 10 years later, they actually adopt it as their policy, and we're always happy to celebrate when people follow our lead.

Greens lead, and others follow.

What's the right tactic when it comes to, like, these big moments? How much do you flatter your opponents, ignore them, elevate them?

Do you think there's a fear, Polanski being a bit overexposed, that the Greens might have to perhaps professionalise a little bit more, otherwise they'll be not taken tremendously seriously as they try and kind of move forward as a party?

Sorry, I have to correct your question.

We're not deciding the manifesto.

What we're deciding is what's called policies for a sustainable society, which is our long-term vision of where we want to go.

And I think the British public is extremely hungry for a long-term vision of what kind of society we want to create.

one where no children are going hungry, one where nature is looked after.

That's what that's looking for, and that's what's decided at conference.

But it feels as though that has a long tail kind of impact on how Green Party people think about the idea of a progressive alliance.

And how would you how would you respond to that? Do you agree?

Well, I think if you go back to 2012, I was elected leader of a vastly smaller Green Party than it is now.

And if you look at the press coverage of my first press conference, people were saying, oh, Natalie's changing the Green Party.

She's not talking so much about climate and nature.

She's talking about social issues.

And if you look at every Green Party conference after those, the same stories were written.

The Greens have always understood, it's written there in our philosophical basis, that economic and environmental justice are indivisible.

Why do you think you've taken such a fall in quite a short period of time?

One of, I suppose one of the questions people have when they see a bill like this coming up and they see that it is this massive, fundamental, radical change is what is this gonna feel like on the ground? Uh, and I suppose the question most people have is how is this going to affect businesses, the way government operates? Is it going to stop human activity? Is it gonna stop us building houses or, uh, things like that?

that?Well, I think, you, what we have to start off with, uh, going back to, to what I said at the start is everything we have is dependent on nature.

And if we have, as we have, a terribly nature depleted environment, then that makes our own lives much worse.

Uh, I go very much with, um, the work of a, um, geographer from Oxford called Jamie Lorimer, uh, written a brilliant book called The Probiotic Planet.

Uh, and he says using life to manage life.

I'd rather say working with life to manage life.

And if you think about, you know, what, what it's like if you go perhaps, you know, some of the most hideous areas of London that I can think of around Victoria Station, um, and I mean, endless building sites, everything being replaced with grass, glass-fronted buildings.

Um, but how then could this bill encourage better decision-making rather than perhaps, say, more regulation?

yeah they had a big thing saying that is uh political bias to basically you know they were making the point there'll be people out there who don't see it that way that want to protect the borders and stamp out illegal migration Etc Etc Etc and that they're not all refugees that's that's the view that they were putting across so what so are we in a position where we need to bring debate more into you know have we lost that debate in school and education or i think

i think we're talking about bringing debate into schools um we come back to the point that i often return to which is about schools being forced to be exam factories now the schools that i go into um and i'm going to put a little advert in here because um the house of lords has the learn with the lords schools program um and if you don't know about it it's a great way for kids of any school you're associated with to learn more about politics, to get given the idea that they could make politics what they do not have done to them.

But I know that I only go into a tiny minority of schools and I hear and I meet people who've been through schools where, you know, everything is just about the exam.

Everything is about the results.

I was doing an adventure at a bookshop and a teacher came up and I was talking about schools being forced to be exam factories.

And she came and virtually wept on my shoulder and said, I spent all of last week doing trial GCSE papers with my kids that I'm going to do all of next week doing trial GCSE papers with my kids.

How about if we took some of that time and helped equip kids to do debating, to debate issues, to discuss issues, to put the time and energy into that? And, you know, when we come to universities, we have lots of talk about shutting down debating universities.

Okay,