Lilian Marijnissen will again be the leader for the Socialist Party (SP) in the upcoming parliamentary elections. On the Party Council, 94 percent of the party body voted for 38-year-old Marijnissen. The appointment is no surprise: the SP party board already nominated Marijnissen last week.
Marijnissen said in her speech after her appointment, according to the ANP news agency, that she sees an opportunity “to set a different, new course for our country”. She emphasized that the SP would be there for the people and would work for better working conditions for teachers and healthcare workers. She also said she wanted to deal with “the increase in poverty” that the “neoliberal politics” of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte would have caused.
Marijnissen became the leader of the left-wing party more than five years ago, when she succeeded Emile Roemer. In all elections that followed, the SP subsequently lost seats. For example, the party went from fourteen to nine seats in the parliamentary elections in 2021 and the party also lost seats in the Senate elections, the provincial elections, the municipal elections and the European parliamentary elections.
On the left, the SP will face stiff competition in the upcoming elections from the joint list of GroenLinks-PvdA, which may be led by Frans Timmermans. In her speech, Marijnissen immediately sought confrontation with Timmermans. “When he was in charge in the Netherlands, he and the VVD chose to close nursing homes and sheltered workshops, to introduce the debt system for students and to raise the state pension age,” said Marijnissen.