If the PvdA does not play chess carefully now, a future threatens as an anonymous player on the much too crowded left wing of the House of Representatives.
Not often was the resignation of a political leader as unexpected as that of Lilianne Ploumen Tuesday. Not often did a political leader give himself so little time to master the craft. It is starting to become symptomatic of the state of Dutch social democracy. Ploumen’s successor, whoever it will be, will already be the eighth PvdA leader in this century. Precisely the party that knows from experience that political leadership has to mature through damage and disgrace before it reaches full maturity – with Joop den Uyl and Wim Kok as striking examples – no longer succeeds in letting people lead the way.
Ploumen’s timing raises questions. The council elections last month were disappointing, but not more disappointing than expected. It wasn’t handed to her. The internal debate in the party about Ploumen’s ongoing merger flirtation with GroenLinks will not be the reason either. It would only have been astonishing if no differences of opinion had arisen over such an essential debate on the future. Was Ploumen perhaps afraid of the investigative report about the dismissal of Gijs van Dijk – the Member of Parliament who left in February after accusations of transgressive behaviour, but who still resists this?
Ploumen herself insisted on Tuesday that the cause must be sought purely in herself. In short, she does not consider herself good enough to lead a broad people’s party. Such self-insight is rare at the Binnenhof, and for that reason alone it is commendable. But even then the question is why she surprises her party so completely with it. For the second time in a year and a half, he now has to hurriedly look for a new group chairman – so that will be someone who has not been able to think about it in detail. Moreover, none of the remaining MPs has been selected on the basis of the broad substantive experience and the leadership qualities that Ploumen lacks in himself.
This will be a defining moment for the new party board led by Esther-Mirjam Sent. After all, the malaise cannot last for years: the dwindling party is already noticeably losing strength in attracting and training administrative talent, while the party has always distinguished itself from the other left-wing parties in this regard. If the PvdA is not careful, it will become an anonymous player on the much too crowded left wing of the House of Representatives.
But somewhere there is still a glimmer of hope. The right party leader can still bring the party back into the struggle for power. Because the voters have not yet forgotten about the PvdA, as Frans Timmermans in Brussels and Marjolein Moorman in Amsterdam have recently proven. A candidate like Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb also has the electoral potential to seriously interfere in national elections.
But that starts with a plan, which now has to be forged in the party office to begin with. The parliamentary group now first chooses its own chairman, but the party must then decide with which story the party wants to pick itself up in the next elections, whether that is with or without GroenLinks, which party leader belongs and how it will be launched as a serious challenger to Mark Rutte and Sigrid Kaag. It could well be the last chance.
The position of the newspaper is expressed in the Volkskrant Commentaar. It is created after a discussion between the commentators and the editor-in-chief.