It was like a balloon that deflated: the VVD motion on the dispersal law, which provoked strong reactions on Wednesday evening and even threatened the survival of the outgoing Rutte IV cabinet, was barely left a day later. The VVD in the House of Representatives believes that this law should be put on hold as long as the formation lasts, but is no longer calling on the cabinet and the Senate to stop considering that law.
What every party in The Hague experiences at some point has been happening to the VVD for some time now: one thing after another goes wrong, and everyone is watching. As VVD leader, Mark Rutte was lucky on a few occasions that the problems in other parties seemed a little bigger at such moments, but his successor Dilan Yesilgöz has not had that luck so far. The campaign strategy, an ‘open door’ to the PVV, failed. And also, it seems, the tactic of ruling out the VVD participating in a cabinet with the PVV immediately after the elections: its own voters found that complicated, and the party came out with full-page advertisements to explain it again.
In addition, the motion on the dispersal law was added on Wednesday afternoon, which Yesilgöz submitted in the House of Representatives as if she wanted to get rid of it as quickly as possible. “I will,” she said, “go straight to the one motion I have.” With the support of the PVV, BBB and NSC, she proposed that the law, which regulates that municipalities can be forced to receive asylum seekers, not be discussed in the Senate for the time being. As if the House of Representatives has anything to say about that.
‘Huge gang of shit’
There was enormous astonishment in the debate hall, not only among the D66, CDA and Christian Union, with which the VVD still forms a caretaker cabinet. Was it still useful, could you belong to those parties, to continue with that cabinet?
Yesilgöz continued to say that the election results had created “a majority to limit the influx” and that they should first be given the opportunity to come up with plans. Pieter Omtzigt from NSC then had a visibly more difficult time. His signature was under the VVD idea. Was this, other MPs asked, what he called “new administrative culture” and the rule of law? That the House of Representatives was going to interfere with the Senate?
There was surprise and sometimes bewilderment and anger among VVD leaders in the rest of the country: VVD member Hanne van Aart, mayor of Loon op Zand, had it on X about a “huge gang of people.” According to insiders, Mark Rutte, in Brussels for a European summit, was also unpleasantly surprised. The same evening he received a message that his cabinet was “discouraging” the motion and that the Senate would consider it itself. The story went around in other parties that VVD State Secretary Eric van der Burg, who did want the dispersal law, did not know what was happening to him, but sources in The Hague contradict this: he had already told a few people around him knowing what was coming.
Was it an “industrial accident”, as some MPs thought? Or “reckless behavior” by Yesilgöz, as others said? It certainly seems not. The fact that this had been thought about in advance is evident from the signatures of Omtzigt, Wilders and Van der Plas under the motion: there had been consultation about it. Nothing reckless ever happens at the VVD: no other party looks so carefully into how an idea can come across, and therefore what risks there are.
In addition, Yesilgöz proves to be extremely consistent and therefore does not seem to want to take any risks. She says again and again that she wants to make “a difference”, “fix” people’s problems and do everything “to make a center-right cabinet possible.”
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