ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Let’s talk more about the coverage of the Rochester by-election result last week.  Amidst talk of UKIP’s successes and Labour’s embarrassment, you might perhaps have overlooked this: the Green Party got their best result in a vote for a Westminster seat since 2010.  They came in fourth place, ahead of course of the Liberal Democrats and later in the programme we’ll be getting the reaction of a senior Liberal Democrat minister but first I am joined by the leader of the Green Party for England and Wales, Natalie Bennett, who must be rather cock-a-hoop about that showing, do you think it was overlooked?  

NATALIE BENNETT:  Well I think it is really very important to notice that we got double the vote that we got in 2010, we got five times the vote of the Lib Dems and that’s a reflection of what’s been called around the country the Green Surge, the fact that our membership is up 19% since the 1st January, that we are polling up around 7-8% in most of the polls for the general election.  It’s a reflection that really we are in now five or six party politics.  

DM: But with the first past the post system, an unreformed voting system, that you’ve really got any more prospect of gaining any more seats or even holding on to the one you’ve got?

NATALIE BENNETT:  I think very much so.  What we are looking forward to is a politics in 2015 that is just utterly unlike anything we’ve had before because what’s really happening is the safe seat is practically disappearing. There is a really good chance that 25% of the vote might win quite a lot of seats with the votes split four ways and we just had a YouGov poll out last week that put us where people said if they thought the Greens could win, 26% of them said they would vote Green so it is all to play for in the next five and a half months.  If you look at the Scottish election and how much things changed in the Scottish election just in the last few weeks, I heard tell of a senior Tory saying this is an election like none before.  So people have a chance to create a peaceful revolution, if you vote for what you believe in – and there is another website, Vote for Policies where people vote blind on policies and we are on 25% on winning on that.  If we did that, if people did that and we’ve had turnouts like 65% in recent elections, imagine a turnout like in Scotland of 85%, we would have a peaceful revolution.  

DM: It’s funny, I smile because a lot of what you are saying, okay the policies are different behind it but a lot of what you are saying and the way you are saying it is being said by Nigel Farage, particularly that point about if people thought the Greens could win a seat they are more likely to vote for them and UKIP are saying in a sense they are now past that point, they have proved it in different seats.

NATALIE BENNETT:  Yes and UKIP has been deeply damaging and dangerous in the way they dragged immigration rhetoric down to the bottom.  

DM: So you agree with a lot of what Mr Clarke was saying there?

NATALIE BENNETT: Very much so.  I think we have to absolutely defend the free right to movement of people in the EU, we have to acknowledge that we should be providing refuge to the refugees who need it and allowing people who should have a right to live in Britain to live in Britain.  

DM: Are you comfortable with net migration figures in the hundreds of thousands rather than in the tens of thousands?

NATALIE BENNETT: I think we’re not going to get to the tens of thousands and what the government’s restrictions have done is actually done enormous damage.  For example this year for the first time ever we saw the number of foreign students applying to study at British universities, the number went down.  Now those foreign students bring a huge amount of money into our British institutions and they also bring a huge amount of value enriching the experience of home students as well.  If you also look at the situation on the government’s own figures 19,000 Britons aren’t allowed to live with their spouse or partner in their own country under rules that a judge described as unfair and unreasonable.  You have to be earning £18,500 a year to bring in someone on a spouse or partner visa and you can’t count the spouse or partner’s salary.  

DM: Just lastly, let me return to your prediction of five or six party politics post the next general election, therefore the calculation is that it might take more than two parties to put together a governing coalition if it be a coalition or certainly a supply and confidence majority.  Now we’ve already heard from Nigel Farage and his party, he’d do a deal with the devil.  If Labour were the largest party, he would support them in certain circumstances and of course the Greens are a more natural fit with the Labour party, could you envisage in some scenarios you sitting along with the Labour party supported by UKIP?

NATALIE BENNETT:  That’s a very interesting one.  What I would say is where we would start is if we just had an election, clearly people don’t want to have another election in three months’ time but we would not prop up a Tory government, we are not into devils unlike Mr Farage but if there is a Labour led coalition which could have lots of different – I think the SNP might have something to say about who might be involved in that but what we would be looking towards is a confidence and supply agreement rather than a coalition.  

DM: But if the arithmetic is such that Labour on its own is the largest party and it needs Green votes, because it gets the promise of a referendum it needs UKIP votes, would you be comfortable with that, on certain key issues going through the lobbies, with your handful of MPs perhaps going through the lobbies with UKIP?  

NATALIE BENNETT:  What we’d be looking to, as I have said, is a confidence and supply agreement which means we’d only guarantee votes on two things, on the budget and that we wouldn’t support a no confidence motion except under extreme circumstances so what we would then be doing is under every other policy or every other bill, voting according to our conscience, our manifesto and what we have promised the people.  So for example we said yes, we would support a referendum on Europe, we would then fight to stay in Europe but we would support the referendum so yes, we would in that circumstance be walking through the same lobbies as UKIP but that’s because we are handing the decision over to the voters.  

DM: Okay, the only certainty then that there are fascinating times ahead.  Thank you very much indeed, Natalie Bennett there, the leader of the Green party in England and Wales.