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This is the specificity fallacy - asking a question that requires very specific facts or figures to answer. And once those figures are given, the interviewer can say, 'but isn't your figure too low? Aren't you not really thinking this through?' The one being questioned is fucked either way. Corbyn's been around long enough to know this sort of rhetorical trap (which is, by the way, a big part of public school education and yet completely missing from the national curriculum - can't let the proles know what we're up to, haw haw)
user800813590210-
Corbyn's been around long enough to know this sort of rhetorical trap
Yet not, apparently, long enough to have developed a way of dealing with it. He didn't have the figures, he didn't cover that by making a joke of it, he didn't challenge the question as a rhetorical trap, he didn't challenge the interviewer, he didn't divert the line of questioning or the subject.
None of those would have necessarily had any more substance than "Er, it will cost, er" but they might have sounded better.
jsabine
It was pretty poor, but the interviewer wasn't great. He didn't know the childcare figures off the top of his head and wasn't able to cover it gracefully while he checked the answer - he seemed to think that if he said nothing, she'd go away. Silence doesn't work on radio ...
It got a bit better for him, but she was badgering him on long term care costs and on Labour's record on electing women, and not giving him space to finish his answers. He seemed to cope a bit better with that.