How the drifting PvdA member Ronald Plasterk led the search for a right-wing cabinet

They met by chance a few days ago in Amsterdam. Job Cohen and Ronald Plasterk had been talking for a while. About how one was doing and the other. Cohen was State Secretary of Justice in the late 1990s, he had introduced the Aliens Act, Plasterk had asked him a few questions about it. What was not discussed in the short meeting is the topic that has dominated the news for weeks: the formation talks between PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB. Plasterk leads this; he will present his final report on Monday.

Job Cohen, he says, had not felt the need to bring it up. Although he could have said something about it. That he had been “extremely surprised” about it. That he understood that a coalition with the PVV could be formed, given the election results. “But as a PvdA member you don’t have to participate in that. As an informant, you may organize the development of positions that are at odds with those of the PvdA. Then I don’t really understand why you remain a party member.”

Bonaire

After the elections, PVV senator Gom van Strien first explored which parties could sit at the table to discuss cabinet formation. But he left after two days, after NRC had revealed that a former employer had filed a complaint against him for fraud and bribery.

And then there was PvdA member Ronald Plasterk. Asked by Wilders, he said, because “he had the impression that I would not fool him.” The two had met in the summer on Bonaire. It clicked. He “didn’t want to make it bigger” and certainly didn’t want to “sound dramatic,” Plasterk said when he took office at the end of November. But the “land was calling, right?” And he had listened.

After the exploration phase, Plasterk stayed on as an informant. For weeks he tried to investigate with Wilders, Dilan Yesilgöz (VVD), Pieter Omtzigt (NSC) and Caroline van der Plas (BBB) ​​whether the parties wanted to continue discussing a coalition agreement.

A PvdA member, a member for 46 years – and still is. Prominent member at that. He was a municipal councilor in Leiden in the 1980s, later became Minister of Education, Culture and Science (Balkenende IV, 2007-2010), Member of Parliament for the PvdA (2010-2012) and Minister of the Interior (Rutte II, 2012-2017). . And he would investigate cabinet formation with the PVV? At the PvdA they did not know what they were hearing.

They knew that Ronald Plasterk had drifted away from the party. They could read it in his columns almost every week since 2020 The Telegraph. He regularly takes positions that many PvdA members do not consider appropriate for their party: on climate, Europe, migration. He regularly writes about his own party, which is said to have “alienated” itself from workers. Based on those columns you might think: Plasterk, outspoken opponent of the merger of PvdA and GroenLinks, has long since given up on the PvdA.

But are those positions new? His old columns – Plasterk wrote columns from the late 1990s until his prime ministership de Volkskrant and Outside court – offer recognition. The molecular biologist, on TV at Outside court invariably announced as “professor”, declared D66 dead in his third column. May 1999, a few days after Wiegel’s night. In the Senate, VVD member Hans Wiegel had voted against a corrective legislative referendum, a crown jewel of coalition partner D66. Prime Minister Wim Kok (PvdA) had offered his resignation to the Queen.

D66 “has in fact become redundant,” says Plasterk straight into the camera. His hair is still a bit darker gray than now, his jacket not yet cut to size, no tie. D66 has existed for thirty-three years, he said. “Beautiful age, that’s how old Jesus has become. Maybe time for the Ascension, I thought.” Almost twenty-five years later, Plasterk has not changed his mind about that party, judging by his more recent columns.

Plasterk’s positions deviated far from the PvdA line early on. For example, he was outspoken against a European constitution during the referendum in 2005, recalls then party chairman Ruud Koole. “The party line was to vote for it,” he says. “Plasterk feared that national sovereignty would come under pressure even then.” Koole does not think that his fellow party member has started to think more right-wing. “He has always had these ideas. He has made it more explicit in recent years, he has adapted his tone to his new audience.”

According to Koole, the fact that Plasterk wants to lead the information discussions is due to a combination of “vanity” (a word that is often used when PvdA members talk about him) and “a somewhat mechanical view of politics”. Ideology, he means, does not weigh that much for Plasterk. “He thinks: there is a result, the PVV is the largest, the right has won, so there must be a right-wing cabinet. And if I am asked, I have to do it.”

Anyone who reads previous statements will see that Plasterk has repeatedly turned firmly against the parties with whom he sat at the table in recent weeks. One of his columns for de Volkskrant from 2006 is called ‘VVD: People’s Party for Viswives and Demagoguery’. About the PVV, he said in 2012 that he wanted to “point out that Wilders has incredibly big stories, but has not prepared anything.” Plasterk could have said, Koole believes, that he did not want to participate in the creation of a PVV cabinet: “It is the responsibility of the PVV to ensure that such a cabinet is created. He could also have said: As a social democrat, no matter how vain I am, I do not contribute to that. Because the values ​​are so at odds with those of social democracy.”

Guusje ter Horst, Minister of the Interior in the Balkenende IV cabinet, remembers that Plasterk “never concealed” in the PvdA’s weekly ministerial meeting that he was in favor of nuclear energy, a subject he still The Telegraph discusses. “While at that time almost the entire world, and certainly the PvdA, was against it,” says Ter Horst. “Quite a few people have changed their views about that.” GroenLinks-PvdA is still against it.

Workers do read The Telegraph

The fact that Plasterk still feels connected to social democracy became clear last autumn in the Amsterdam debate center De Balie, when Martin Sommer retired as a Volkskrant columnist. In an on-stage conversation with PvdA member Jeroen Dijsselbloem, former Minister of Finance and now Mayor of Eindhoven, Plasterk’s Telegraaf columns were discussed. He was in the audience. Asked for a response by the moderator, Plasterk told about his neighborhood in Amsterdam, where almost no one would vote PvdA anymore, and that he worked week in week out in The Telegraph wrote down why that was. That workers do The Telegraph read. He said, Sommer recalls when asked, “something about administrators having to listen better to voters. To which Dijsselbloem replied that the country also had to be governed, and that voters could not only be listened to.”

It is a message that Plasterk tries to bring to the attention of his fellow party members more often. Also with Job Cohen, who received an email from him some time ago. “He wrote that his columns could not be a reason not to have contact. That the people from his neighborhood were the dropouts who once belonged to the PvdA.” Cohen, joking: “Of course, as a tea drinker, I couldn’t say no to that.” Plasterk wrote that he wanted to convey the social democratic message to the Telegraaf Reader. Cohen: “If I see anything in those columns, I can’t really detect that in them.” The email contact bled to death.

Other PvdA members, politically active, also receive messages from Plasterk about a position taken, current events or their policy. What does that say? According to some, he is trying to impose his opinion and prove his point. They see that Plasterk is not receptive when inaccuracies in his columns are refuted. Others see his messages as proof that he still feels involved in the party. Why else would he bother?

Hats

Brought in 2008 EWthe former magazine Elseviera book about the American political TV series West Wing, popular in the Netherlands among politicians and civil servants. In it, actor Martin Sheen plays the fictional President Josiah Bartlet, a charismatic intellectual. At the book presentation, says former editor-in-chief Arendo Joustra, a factual quiz was held about the series. “Ronald Plasterk knew everything,” says Joustra. He seems to remember that Plasterk won. But what impressed him more: Plasterk, just as Bartlet had often done, managed to put his jacket in one smooth movement (the flip) to attract.

Plasterk, say people who have worked with him, loves politics. And the attention that politics can generate. Almost everyone will remember his hats and the many visits to events as culture minister. He is also ambitious, party members say. In 2012 he competed against Diederik Samsom in the battle for party leadership. It was intense, especially at the end. But once it turned out that Samsom had won, say those involved, he could immediately count on Plasterk’s loyalty.

His vanity, say people who know him, can also get in the way of Plasterk. He likes to show that he knows better. As a minister he was not always good at setting a clear line. These are messages that are now also being heard among forming parties. The fact that he let things take their course, according to those involved, would not have done the conversations any good. Cohen: “He thinks it’s great that he can do this. But if that is driven by vanity, then the risk is that it takes up more space than the goal.”

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