GREEN Party MEP Molly Scott Cato has backed her party’s leader, Natalie Bennett, after an LBC Radio interview on Tuesday last week which Ms Bennett herself admitted was “excruciating”.

Interviewed by presenter Nick Ferrari, Ms Bennett failed to answer questions about the Green Party’s economic policy, going silent for long periods and stumbling over her responses.

Writing in Red Box, the political e-newsletter launched of The Times, South West MEP Ms Scott Cato expressed her “100 per cent support” for the party leader.

She said: “I was really sad to hear that Natalie gave a bad interview, and even more sad to see the round of highly- negative comment that followed. I have absolutely no problem with serious scrutiny of the Green Party's policies and the way we intend to pay for them. The constant focus on the numbers rather than the issues, however, reduces the media interview to some elaborate version of an exam, where what is being tested is your ability to remember statistics. Is this really the best way to test a political party and its leaders?”

The interview focused on housing. Ms Scott Cato continued: “Our plan is to increase the social housing budget from £1.5bn to £6bn per year to build 500,000 new social rented homes by 2020. That’s a government subsidy of roughly £60,000 per home, to be paid for by abolishing the tax relief handed to private landlords on buy-to-let mortgage interest payments and reforming other landlord tax allowances. Sadly, this was lost in the commentary about Natalie's memory lapse.”

The MEP also commented on what she described as a “gender dimension”. She said: “In my experience, women tend not to thrive as well as men in situations where personal and vindictive attacks are the order of the day. Some of the comments suggested that if we, as women, could not take the heat, then we should not be involved in politics. Why should we pretend that our politicians are not ordinary; in fact isn't this one of the things that encourages us to set them apart as a political class which we then detest?”

She added: “Natalie has done a superb job in leading the party during this current surge in our support. As her friend I feel confident in expressing publicly the wish that can take the time to rest and recover. I hope that doesn't make you think that either she or I are not up to the job of being a politician.”