Friday, 5:05 p.m. Routinely check the NOS site, read: ‘Asylum crisis.’ Immediately images in my head of tens of thousands of asylum seekers who, trampling each other, crowd at Lobith; That ‘stream of asylum seekers’ resembles a river, and that is where it should enter our country. But you should always read beyond the headline: ‘There are tensions within the cabinet (…).’
Ah, the threat of a cabinet crisis over asylum policy. Somehow that’s an anticlimax after my dramatic associations.
Getting ready for a restaurant visit, with a mother and her son (18), the latter just graduated from high school. And because he is so young, he dares to look at his mobile while eating. We had just talked about it. Sure. “Cabinet fallen,” he cuts through the conversation. We also check. Nobody faints. Nobody tears. The mother shouts “outrageous”, I shout, less spontaneously: “Asylum, a nice right-wing campaign theme”, and we briefly discuss how and what and who benefits from this. You cannot say that the ancient Greek fate has struck, this crisis was wanted, and by Rutte himself, we conclude. The desserts come, the rest of the terrace continues to eat unaffected.
Friday: 10:30 pm. Back home, watch Rutte’s press conference live. He speaks in a low voice, with something of a grave in his timbre. “Migration is a major and social subject.” That we do not think that the cabinet has fallen over a faint. I have already heard from an official commentator that “the CU has pulled the plug from the cabinet”. Rutte does something very refined: he first criticizes himself, because of his ‘firmness’ of last Wednesday, “which was not helpful either”. And then he debunks the plug myth of the CU. That is chic, because he is not here as the leader of the VVD, but as prime minister, and he should not point out one of his ministers as the guilty party. It is also ambiguous, because with that strong denial of the decisive role that the CU would have played, Rutte says in the subtext: “That little club doesn’t have that much power.” A psychological tour de force.
Saturday around 3 p.m., looking from the window of my office. Hundreds of boats and sloops on the Amstel, exuberant half-undressed groups, with no apparent bachelor. A broken coalition government doesn’t generate much sympathy. Is such a cabinet fall less important to most people than Gordon’s latest date break? At most, some ripples on the pond of the Binnenhof. Soldiers don’t suddenly appear on the street either, which makes a difference.
Sunday, 10 a.m. You get used to it quickly, such a caretaker cabinet. Will I still miss Rutte? Better question: will I even have the chance to miss Rutte?
Stephen Sanders writes a column here every Monday.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper on July 10, 2023.