Those present in the hall had more questions than time allowed during the joint members’ meeting on Monday evening, in the Luxor Live pop stage in Arnhem. Does the PvdA, like GroenLinks, actually support a basic income? If that helps to fight inequality, Kuiken is not against it on principle. What is GroenLinks’ position on trade unions? According to Klaver, that’s fine, in fact, he would give the unions a little more incentive to campaign. Is the PvdA green enough? Yes, Klaver assures his party members. “Green and red are linked, because the exploitation of the earth stems from capitalism, a system that puts profit before the well-being of people.”
It is not the first time that the party leaders of the PvdA and GroenLinks have shared the stage to talk to the members of both constituencies. In 2020, Asscher (PvdA) and Klaver and Lilian Marijnissen (SP) climbed the podium in the Tolhuistuin to jointly speak out against the Rutte III cabinet. But it didn’t want to come from a meaningful left bloc after that.
‘Now it’s about something,’ says Klaver. For decades there has been writing, discussion and arguing about cooperation and mergers, but now the non-commitment is gone. For the first time, the question is whether left-wing cooperation will be officially settled with the formation of a joint Senate faction after the senate elections in 2023. ‘In general, everyone is in favor of left-wing cooperation’, says GroenLinks chairperson Katinka Eikelenboom. In the run-up to the elections to the Senate, it is ‘good to ask the question what we want then’.
A new story
After the PvdA and GroenLinks decided not to let go of each other in the formation, the formation strategy developed into an ever closer collaboration between the parliamentary parties. And she likes that very much. By joining forces, we are working on a new story. Kuiken’s conviction is a story with which the ‘left’ cannot be separated. This has not been achieved sufficiently in recent years. “Whenever we think we have the right story, the right overtakes us. Because there are more of them, because they are smarter.’ The answer according to Klaver: ‘We must dare to be even more impudent on the left.’
The amalgamation of the factions in the Senate can serve as a test case: will the PvdA and GroenLinks succeed in becoming the largest together in 2023? And should a possible success not be repeated with one joint list of the House of Representatives? One senate faction is not yet a merger, but it cannot be viewed separately from it either.
While the cooperation between the parliamentary groups was a decision of those groups themselves, Klaver and Kuiken emphatically show that the next step is up to the members. Now the question is how deeply intertwined the two parties may become. What the future of left-wing politics will look like will be filled in from the bottom up. First, GroenLinksers are allowed to vote in a referendum on one joint Senate faction from 2 June to 10 June. The PvdA will vote on joining forces at its congress on 11 June.
In the coming weeks, Klaver and Kuiken will therefore visit their supporters in the country even more often to explain, just like Monday evening, why cooperation is necessary. To reinforce his conviction that an alliance is the future, Klaver even flirted with a PvdA membership. “I’ll think about that.”
Kuiken, who has only been party leader for a few weeks, is showing a little more caution. She is in favor of cooperation, but she is not yet sure whether she is in favor of one joint Senate group. ‘What that collaboration will look like is up to the congress. I have no judgment on that yet. A senate faction together is something fundamental: you vote as a block. Some members will find that too exciting.’
It is clear that Klaver and Kuiken steer their supporters a bit, but do not want to impose anything. There are still too many questions that need to be answered first. ‘It must not happen that our supporters no longer feel at home with us and move to the flanks’, warns Kuiken. “I’m for a careful process.”
The spitting image
Will the ideals and identities of the GroenLinks and PvdA not be diluted if the parties decide to cooperate even more closely? Several questions along these lines were heard at the joint members’ meeting on Monday. A look at voting behavior in the House of Representatives in recent years shows that the two parties are already very close ideologically. Until the fall of the previous cabinet in January 2021, the parties voted the same in 92 percent of the cases, it turned out last year from research by the political weblog Piece Red Meat† In the caretaker months of 2021, that percentage was 94 percent. There are no other parties that come so close to each other, although GroenLinks and Volt also voted the same in 93 percent.
In 2019, the voting guide for the European Parliament elections had to be adjusted, because PvdA and GroenLinks had provided all thirty positions and thirty reserve positions with the same answer.