Frans Timmermans Prime Minister of the Netherlands? I hear the editors of The Telegraph gagging already. They don’t dare say it out loud, but they do think it: they would rather have Geert Wilders, much more in fact. Or like Johan Derksen, that other right-wing media figurehead in the Netherlands, at the end of his book dedicated to Wilders Today Inside twice beamingly stated: “The Netherlands needs him.”
Derksen forgot that the Netherlands had already found him necessary – and still has to regret the consequences of this, the political chaos, every day. In the same way that they now have to regret the loss of billions in the United Kingdom due to Brexit, which Wilders (‘Nexit’) was also a supporter of at the time. Give the populists a finger and they’ll cut off your entire arm.
Thank God the coming elections will no longer revolve around Wilders. He will undoubtedly win by a clear margin, but no political party of any importance will ever want to work with him again. Runaways are ultimately dead-ends. Even Dilan Yesilgöz, the failing leader of the VVD, now sees this, but it is too late for her, she has become a political dead-end herself.
The elections are mainly about the question: who will be the second party in the Netherlands? GroenLinks/PvdA or CDA – or maybe even D66? That second party will probably provide the prime minister. So that will be Timmermans, Bontenbal or Jetten. Of the three, Timmermans is by far the least popular. In fact, he is downright despised by part of the media and the public, so much so that almost every interview with him begins with the question: “How do you explain that, Mr. Timmermans?”
Of course, that is an unanswerable question especially for Mr. Timmermans, so I will try here. In terms of experience and expertise, Timmermans stands head and shoulders above the rest of Dutch politics. Compared to him, Bontenbal and Jetten are little boys who have just come to watch in their short parliamentary trousers. Timmermans also faces little competition in his own party. Second man Jesse Klaver was allowed to open his mouth once in this campaign – and immediately did so painfully badly by bombarding Mona Keijzer with a rehearsed insult (‘eel populism’).
Timmermans rarely swears, he prefers to argue. And he does it so eloquently and intelligently that he is the boss of everyone. With the otherwise excellent TV program News hour they will understand what I mean. They now put a party leader on their rack every day – and no one comes away unscathed. Nobody, except Frans Timmermans. He dismissed the cunning interviewer and the economic interpreter from their cunning piece and left with a smile.
This country should look for a competent prime minister, not for the nicest boy in class, Diederik Samsom wrote in de Volkskrant in a plea for Timmermans. Indeed, the trick about Timmermans is that he has the appearance of the smartest boy in the class – and those are never the most popular boys. Frans has the best grades, but the schoolyard bullies, such as Donald, Boris, Vladimir, Benjamin and Geert, know better who and what is for sale in the world.
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