In his first major speech as party leader of GroenLinks/PvdA, Frans Timmermans made a plea for the broad political center. The left must “not only have the will to convince, but also the willingness to be convinced,” Timmermans said on Sunday afternoon in De Rode Hoed in Amsterdam. There he delivered the annual Abel Herzberg lecture.
According to Timmermans, only if left-wing parties make compromises with other parties in the political center can progress be made, for example in the field of climate or socio-economic policy. “Redistribution is a necessary factor in every political choice that has to be made. Compromises will have to be made about the direction and extent of redistribution.”
Timmermans said that politicians should above all listen and not be stuck in their own right. This is how he got rid of his ideas about Zwarte Piet. He talked about “the neo-Puritan insistence that some things may no longer be said or shown.” “I wouldn’t be who I am without Monty Python, Koot en De Bie, Jiskefet, Robin Williams, Billy Connolly or Ricky Gervais.”
The 62-year-old outgoing European Commissioner presented himself as a pragmatic politician, for whom the outcome is more important than principles. He feels at home in the political center, although he warned against conservative parties leaving the center and moving to the flanks. “I fervently hope for a conservatism that does not leave the center, that does not close the shutters, that sees diversity and modernization as opportunities, also for its own political future.” Timmermans did not mention any names.
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Criticism of community thinkers
Despite his conciliatory message, he created a great distance between his view of humanity and society and that of, for example, Pieter Omtzigt and Caroline van der Plas. Omtzigt and Van der Plas, with other parties in their wake, argue for a return of a sense of community in society.
Timmermans opposed this and continually emphasized the importance of individual freedoms. Timmermans said: “We must guard against that [met gemeenschapszin] a closed community is not created. We must cherish and further develop the many achievements in the field of individual freedoms. The community is opposed to selfishness, not to the individual.”
The party leader sometimes hears people say that the ‘open society’ has also led to a diminished sense of community. That’s a misrepresentation, he said. Without getting specific, he cited foreign “autocrats” who “always offer the same Faustian deal: give me your freedom and I will give you safety and security in return. Too often they have managed to get people to do this. Once trapped, they are forced increasingly tight into a straitjacket of lack of freedom, like a kind of autocratic click fund.”
Autocrats always offer the same Faustian deal: give me your freedom and I will give you safety and security in return
Frans Timmermans
After the speech, in conversation with the audience, Timmermans said that he is “very much in favor of” the community spirit of Omtzigt and the neighborliness of Van der Plas, but that these should never lead to “the sacrifice of individual freedoms”, as gay marriage.
Throughout his speech, Timmermans placed a striking emphasis on individualism. For example, he talked about how it is not your background or social group – your ‘home’ – that determines who you are, but your own choices. He sees that “every reactionary movement” claims just the opposite: “Your actions are defined by your identity, instead of your identity being formed by your actions.”
‘There is a better self in man’
He sees a lot of grumpiness and “short fuses” in Dutch society, but according to him these do not have to do with a fading sense of community, but with “washed away self-confidence”. There is “a better me” in people, said the party leader. “If we give our better self more space again, this will boost our self-confidence and our mutual trust will grow.”
Afterwards, Timmermans said that he did not want to make a party political speech, but wanted to tell a personal story. Yet with his speech the new party leader touched on an old cultural difference between PvdA and GroenLinks. The social-democratic PvdA has traditionally had a collectivist tradition, which mainly revolves around redistribution of scarce resources. GroenLinks, especially since the leadership of Femke Halsema (2002-2010), has a more liberal view of humanity and traditionally emphasizes more individual freedoms. In that sense, Timmermans’ story (himself a politician with a PvdA background) was more ‘GroenLinks’ than ‘PvdA’.
By the way, the word ‘left’ only appeared once in Timmermans’ speech. That was when he quoted his “political father”, PvdA minister Max van der Stoel: “Anyone who wants to act on the left must know how the right thinks.”
Also read this profile: His ego can sometimes get in the way of Frans Timmermans