It happened at the beginning of July last year. The Cabinet-Schoof, from (then) PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB, had just taken office. Schoof read the government statement, and then a nasty, chaotic debate began. Laurens Dassen, party chairman of Volt, spent a lot of his time on Geert Wilders. Dassen talked about the “racist, disgusting mud” of the surrounding theory, which had spread two PVV ministers. “A great shame,” he told Wilders. He looked at Wilders furiously, his voice sounded higher than normal.
Then the summer recess started. Dassen then wondered if he had done well, he says in his office in the Lower House. “I noticed that I did not get any energy from this at all. I, and my party, are more than just non-Wilders? I have to stand out the extreme right, say what I don’t find acceptable. But I also want to tell our own story, sketch a bright future.”
And so Dassen did it completely differently when the cabinet fell, less than a year later. Again there was a debate, with Schoof, with Wilders. That debate also went vinny. But Dassen said in that debate that he wanted to talk about “things that make me enthusiastic,” such as “breeding meat, a basic income and a European army.”
When you were talking about breeding meat, at such a politically loaded moment, you were laughed at by your colleagues in the Lower House. Did you understand that?
“I don’t know if it was laughing. But I also noticed the reaction. The fact that there was laughing showed that it is still unorthodox to talk about vistas in the Lower House. While in my opinion politics should be much more about that.”
Laurens Dassen (39) has been the chairman of Volt in the Lower House since 2021. Then the Pan-European party broke through three seats in Dutch politics. Volt has been dreaming of a broad European rise since its foundation, but it has not yet started (except for small successes in a few countries). Volt does have five seats in the European Parliament, based on electoral success in the Netherlands and Germany.
The biggest problem for volts is immediately the most insoluble: the progressive time. Volt wants to be a breakthrough party, and rejects the old political relationships. The party does not want to be called left or right, but progressively. Initially, the Volt MPs knew nothing about The Hague, says Dassen. “We came in completely blank here. The first day I had to go to the scout and I was lost. Then I arrived in waiting journalists. Informator Kajsa Ollongren was photographed there with her notes about Pieter Omtzigt, but that happened to me with my notes.”
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But the longer volts are in parliament, the more the batch of root shoots and will just belong. Dassen has the rules and procedures, and has lost the nerves he had in the beginning when he was at the interruption microphone. “The last four years have been one big learning moment.”
Volt has been running for four years. How do you stay a breakthrough party?
“By constantly running out for politics. For example, by coming up with ideas that no one dares in in The Hague. The old parties do not dare to close Tata Steel. No one dares to argue for a basic income. No one dares to argue for a real European army. We do.”
You have only recently made a twist about the closing of Tata Steel. Why do you think differently about that now?
“I always thought: we have to make that factory greener. It is important for steel development, for the Netherlands, that we have that factory. But now that we have studied it for two years, I think about it very differently. It only costs money. In my eyes, Tata Steel has become the symbol of everything that holds old, polluting and subsidy: new industry is against.”
Closure costs jobs.
“Yes. People who work there now deserve a good social plan. But there is a huge demand for the well -trained employees of Tata.”
According to your election program you want to help companies make it greener. But that is no longer accessible for Tata Steel?
“No, because the entire revenue model of Tata Steel is no longer good. The factory also has a huge impact on the health of the environment, stands for around 8 percent of our CO2-Moet, consumes 33 billion liters of freshwater per year, in a time of increasing scarcity. Politics is making hard choices, and this is one of them. “
In your election program you write that it is ‘Kneiter Progressive’. Could you not slowly call Volt a left -wing party?
“No, no. I see that left-right contradiction as old politics. That does not suit us.”
In the field of climate and social economy you are in line with most other left -wing parties, or you will go even further. Volt is for a basic income and for a higher minimum wage.
“Is it the left to want everyone to get a decent income? And what’s left of climate policy? Global warming of the earth is going hard, that’s not a theme that fits on a spectrum. Apart from that, I don’t think you could call our ideas about nuclear energy or a European army left.
Is Volt open for government participation?
“Yes, in a cabinet that is as progressively as possible. If there are parties that are democratic, legal and honest.”
Who would you like to get into a cabinet with?
“GroenLinks-PvdA, D66 and CDA. That would probably also be possible. But politics is in the first place an ideas struggle. That must be this time too.”
Columnist Sander Schimmelpenninck written earlier this month in de Volkskrant That ties, just like D66 leader Rob Jetten, “outside the bubble of freestyle and snack roots a bit good.” It is surprised Schimmelpenninck that the VVD is collapsing in the polls, but that Volts hardly benefits from it. The ‘NRC-You don’t see reading VVD members anyway.
Dassen has read the column. He says: “It is especially important that we have our own story, dare to stand for our principles. I prefer a party with six seats that fight for ideals than a party with thirty seats based on quicksand and no longer knows what she stands for.”
But the theme of Volt is international politics. That lives enormously among voters, see Gaza, Ukraine, Russia and the US. Where is the large international breakthrough of Volt?
“I think we are doing well in the Netherlands. Volt Europe is active in eight countries. But it is sometimes difficult with electoral thresholds, whether we will collapse after an election, after which we have to start again. It goes with trial and error.”
Do you be impatient?
“Yes. I think it’s going too slow.”
What can you change about that?
“I can inspire departments in other countries, help with campaigns. We have representatives in eight countries, almost 40,000 members in Europe. So that is going well. I think it should go faster.”
You can also say: Volt apparently catches much less outside the Netherlands. We stop the Pan-European project.
“But now that we have chosen representatives in eight countries, you would kill the idea while it just gets off the ground. I think it should go faster. At the same time, I also think that the development is going well, that we are taking good steps.”
The very first debate that Laurens Dassen experienced as a Member of Parliament was the notorious ‘function elsewhere’ debate, about Pieter Omtzigt, a accidentally leaked note and the rotten administrative culture in The Hague. Dassen: “MPs then said to me: you are only experiencing such a debate once. But in the meantime I have experienced a lot of debates of these types of debates. Debats that show how bad the relationships are and how great the political standstill is.”
Why is that? Nobody wants a standstill, right?
“Well, I wonder. I see many parties mainly concerned with the question of how they get a plus in the polls, how they can win the next elections. It is permanent campaign here, the focus is on this day, instead of ideals or the future. We had a head lines of four parties that was a summary and the result of a subsequent vision. are now plummeting on all international rankings. ”
And you are not sensitive to that?
“Politics is addictive. I also start looking at my phone every morning: what happened? What will happen? I am not insensitive to that either. But I am always trying to ask myself the question: why have you already canceled your job again? [Dassen werkte tot 2018 bij ABN Amro.] That is not this week’s debate, about the retirement of NSC from the coalition. For me it is still about the ideals of the time. ”
But how does that fixation explain the poor political culture on polls?
„Ik denk dat partijen zo bezig zijn met de vraag hoe ze groot kunnen blijven dat ze twee fouten maken: ze mijden moeilijke keuzes om grote problemen aan te pakken, en bieden zo ruimte aan extremisme. En zodra de extremen groeien, zoals de PVV, gaan partijen de retoriek overnemen, of zelfs hun standpunten. Op asiel en migratie zag je de VVD dat eerst doen, maar daarna ook D66 en GroenLinks-PvdA. Ook zij praten over asiel en Migration in terms of a problem that should be grip on.
How do you look at your own role when it comes to the deteriorated political culture?
“I am also critical of myself. I often think: I could have done that better, I could have been sharper on that.”
Like when?
“I am thinking of the SMS debate with then Prime Minister Mark Rutte. [Rutte kwam zwaar in de problemen toen bleek dat hij dagelijks sms’jes verwijderde van zijn mobiele telefoon.] The room made it a huge thing, so do me. And no matter how rightly the criticism of Rutte was, at the end of the day we actually had not achieved anything. Immediately afterwards I had to be in Moldova for a working visit. And there it was about Russia, how the gas was squeezed, cyber attacks, threat. And despite everything, the atmosphere there was so positive, everyone worked so hard on the good. Then I wondered: are we doing well? Are we working on the right topics in The Hague? ”