The Netherlands changed from a center-right country to a right-wing country in 2023, and this also has consequences during campaign time. The right-wing dominance ensures that migration is once again the main issue for most voters (38 percent), I read Ipsos I&O. Living (29 percent) comes in second.
It does not necessarily lead to the policy debate on migration becoming more substantive. This became clear on Tuesday in the Senate, where the election of the new chairman logically attracted attention, but a fascinating expert meeting on asylum policy came off poorly.
This included the decision of the House of Representatives to make illegal stay a punishable offense at the proposal of the PVV. Implementing organizations were given the floor.
The Police stressed that this legislation ‘does not provide sufficient clarity’, so that it ‘remains concerned about its implementation’. The VNG pointed out staff shortages at all kinds of agencies, so that soon “the measure does legally exist” but is “not enforceable”. There is then a threat of “a shadow society” that will burden “safety in public spaces.”
Earlier showed the Council for the Judiciary and the Return and Departure Service, among others, expressed similar skepticism. Bottomline: Popular plan, bad idea.
Impracticable measures
These are not unfamiliar sounds. But if the desire for less migration is so great that the balance disappears from the system, the result is that the campaign mainly revolves around slogans (‘asylum stop’) and this kind of elementary criticism goes virtually undiscussed.
Not that all party leaders ignore that criticism. But the theme has been dominated by one voice (‘less, less’) for so long that they have little chance of shifting the debate. And so there is a real danger, a few years after the Benefits Affair, that politicians will once again take impracticable measures that solve nothing but do have uncomfortable side effects.
In the explanation from Ipsos I&O on the latest poll, I found another fascinating fact: which three parties are currently unable to retain even half of their 2023 voters? These are, indeed, the three who joined forces with the PVV in 2023.
We have known this about NSC for a while. The party that was warmly welcomed into the coalition by Geert Wilders in the summer of 2024, when the sun started shining again, was dismissed by him as the National Sabotage Club eleven months later, after the PVV boss had dropped the cabinet. Dancing on a corpse: that’s what Wilders is good at.
But now that VVD and BBB are also failing to break the downward spiral, this reveals a more painful fact: any party that does not provide the prime minister and still decides to work with Wilders ends up in a free fall.
The CDA, which in the noughties usually accounted for a quarter of the votes, dropped to 8.5 percent in 2012, after two years of cooperation with the PVV. The VVD, which usually had a quarter of the votes in the 1910s, is now in the Peilingwijzer at around 8 to 10 percent. And BBB, which will still be the largest in the 2023 State elections, will virtually fall back to 2 to 3 percent.
It says a lot about the relative importance of Wilders as a virtual frontrunner: only parties with the political sense of a banana will still do business with him.
In the meantime, VVD and BBB spread a smell of further decay. The BBB election manifesto contains a cryptic one text about the Council of State as the highest administrative court: the party wants to reduce the apparently too high political content of the Council by, indeed, giving politicians more control over appointments. You hope that BBB understands this itself.
Party leader Caroline van der Plas also complains about the major role of D66 in the Council of State. A recent performance at WNL on Sunday suggested that this is about the department Advice of the Council – not the department Administrative law that the party mentions in its election manifesto.
It then turned out that she did not know that of the seventeen state councilors in Advisory, only two are D66 members. Henri Bontenbal mentioned Outside court her statements are “undermining” for democracy. And Tom De Bruyneformer campaign strategist of the VVD, at WNL: “She plays Geert Wilders from Aldi.”
The KiesKompas notes that the BBB right-wing. In the asylum dossier, the party shifts to the PVV, and like Wilders, the BBB now complains about “de-Islamization”. According to Statistics Netherlands, the percentage of Muslims has hardly increased in the last twenty years: from 5.7 percent of the population in 2000 to 6 percent in 2023.
Enter the report NRC of the election of the new Senate President last Tuesday, showed that the BBB lacks virtually any political expertise. The Senate faction, no longer the largest after three splits, was initially unable to appoint a joint candidate. And when the party did put forward faction leader Ilona Lagas, it turned out that she had no chance of becoming the chairman of the House among non-BBB members.
It led to a predominantly right-wing Senate electing a left-wing chairman, Mei Li Vos (GL-PvdA). You don’t often see so much bumbling.
The VVD now shows all the signs of a power party that is losing its self-control. Mayor Mark Boumans of Doetinchem criticized Sunday Outside court the right-wing campaign strategy of Dilan Yesilgöz. He predicts that the party will soon have more outgoing ministers than MPs.
As a result, the right-wing pressure group within the VVD, Classical Liberal, gave way. Boumans is said to be an “activist” who “fails by distancing ourselves from our right-wing liberal course,” according to a message on X, which was later deleted.
In any case, Classical Liberal is a curious case of strategic nonsense. A group that turned against the centre-right course under Mark Rutte on asylum, security and agriculture, and in the 2021 formation via News hour came out. In The Telegraph said founder Ad Lagas to Wierd Duk at the time admiring about Caroline van der Plas.
The founder of Classical Liberal is the husband of BBB leader Ilona Lagas in the Senate. He has now exchanged the VVD for the BBB, he told me last year.
Yet during Rutte IV, many points of Classical Liberal were echoed in the party. Primer for the righter course under Yesilgöz. But the neglect of the liberal wing and rapprochement with the PVV from 2023 has now left the party in an electoral hole.
Monday picked up RTL News dating anonymous VVD members who are gloomy about the elections. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with ten seats,” said a former VVD mayor. Former VVD spin doctor Henri Kruithof called it “logical” that a successor to Yesilgöz is already being considered, who opposed himself this week NRC “not a populist”.
To increase the festive spirit, Senator Cees van de Sanden left the VVD on Wednesday, criticizing the right-wing populist course. “We have lost our liberal compass.”
Wrong environment
And now VVD and BBB, electoral competitors just before the elections, no longer give each other the light of day.
Via the NOS pale Thursday that they have a disagreement in the outgoing cabinet about a controversial plan by BBB minister Femke Wiersma to allow more nitrogen space when granting permits to farmers and builders, for example. According to the employers’ lobby, this is an irresponsible risk, because it would require further judicial intervention threatens.
Above all, it underlines how much the VVD has maneuvered itself into the wrong political environment. From the Ipsos I&Odates it also appears that the supporters of PVV, BBB and JA21 belong to voters who attach little value to “stable government” when choosing their vote.
This does play a major role in the support of five parties: CDA, CU, D66, GL-PvdA and, indeed, VVD. It is therefore no coincidence that Yesilgöz always emphasizes that she strives for a stable cabinet.
Only: her preference for a “center-right” coalition without GL-PvdA requires (new) cooperation with parties such as BBB and JA21 – and there the story is no longer correct. Moreover, as above, it would lead to more popular but unenforceable legislation.
This is the error on which the VVD has ended up. Although we also know: after the CPB calculations and the first television debate, on Sunday on RTL4, the campaign really starts.
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