Political history sometimes writes itself in a few minutes. This also applies this Friday evening, at the Ministry of General Affairs, where the Council of Ministers had met for hours. A large part of the time it was about additional measures against Israel, because of the attack on Gaza City and the plans to build thousands of illegal homes on the occupied West Bank.
By half past seven in the evening, outgoing Minister Caspar Veldkamp of Foreign Affairs (NSC) had pushed his seat to the rear. He got up. He didn’t think he was long enough on the table, he said, it was so little that he couldn’t wear it. Then, to the astonishment of the other ministers, including Veldkamp’s party members, he had left the room.
A few minutes later he had announced his departure in front of the cameras of the journalists who had gathered in the ministry’s hall. After this, the other ministers and state secretaries from NSC met. They decided to be solidarity for an hour after Veldkamp and also to step up.
No ‘joyful’ meeting
“A worthless day,” said outgoing Prime Minister Dick Schoof later in the evening, in the corridor in front of the plenary room of the Lower House. The Council of Ministers had been ‘not a joyful meeting’. Schoof was “pretty grumpy” about it and thought it was “pretty irresponsible” to get out of the cabinet. “And that is perhaps a soft word.”
There is almost nothing left of the outgoing cabinet. The only remaining coalition parties, VVD and BBB, together have 32 seats. After the departure of NSC, and earlier the departure of the PVV in June, the cabinet is almost powerless in the Lower House.
The already shaky outgoing cabinet has landed in further chaos, and with it also the government. When the PVV had left, the hope that those left behind would go quietly, administratively and responsible for the elections. That never happened. The remaining parties granted each other little, and the differences were also not bridged between them.
Minimal leeway
VVD and BBB now have to go for a month further: first there are elections, at the end of October, then a new formation will follow. The play space of the parties is minimal, and the authority of the partyless sheaf is even smaller. He seemed almost invisible when he announced the departure of NSC in the Lower House in a few sentences in a few sentences. There were many group chairmen there, but the VVD group, where there is a lot of anger and misunderstanding, had only sent spokesperson Eric van der Burg.
The cabinet must continue, but how? Just after NSC’s departure, they have no idea at the Ministry of General Affairs. This way they do not know how all cabinet posts should be distributed, and whether all departed ministers are replaced. Schoof would travel to Kyiv this weekend to meet Ukrainian President Zensky. He canceled that. Instead, he said he needs the entire weekend to get clarity. Early next week, when the House starts debating about the departure of NSC, he hopes to be able to provide more clarity about it.
A departure from NSC hung in the air much more often. But it never happened. But on Friday you heard from NSC people that their ‘limits’ had been exceeded, because the cabinet did not want to take stricter measures against Israel. Eddy van Hijum, Deputy Prime Minister and party leader of NSC, said that Veldkamp, ”one of the best ministers of this cabinet”, did not get the leeway he needed.
Seek boundaries
NSC’ers talked more often in recent months, which came very close. When NSC went to participate in the Schoof cabinet, the party promised to strictly control the cabinet, to test ideas along the “ruler” (in the words of party chairman Nicolien van Vroonhoven) of the rule of law. But get out of the cabinet? NSC always shocked for such a step.
The border was not reached when NSC member and State Secretary Nora Achahbar (surcharges) left last year for the manners in the cabinet. Not even when the PVV sought the boundaries of the democratic legal order. And still not when the majority of the group could not live with a adopted PVV motion about the criminalization of illegality just before the summer. NSC wanted ‘comfort’ from the cabinet that it would not go so fast, did not get it, and still participated in the coalition by voting for two asylum laws. Now NSC is doing it. And that it is already campaign time, the NSC group noticed when VVD MP Eric van der Burg said in the Chamber on Friday evening: “Beeful how NSC leaves the government in a big mess.”
For NSC itself, the sudden departure is a gamble, but that would also have been. Many members and voters have run away in recent months because they missed a fundamental attitude in the party. In fact, Nicolien van Vroonhoven told NRC at the end of last year that she just wanted her party to move more with the coalition, and would not always hang against it. For example, NSC became less and less the party that stood for good governance, and eventually participated.
Nobody at NSC knows exactly how to proceed. The party has been controlled since the departure of party founder Pieter Omtzigt in April. In November 2023 he won twenty room seats, largely on his own strength, polls show that NSC threatens to have zero seats. Within NSC it can be heard that it might not be so much anymore, and that it is better to stand up for your principles than to think too strategically.
Leader Eddy Van Hijum has now lost his prominent position in the cabinet. If he wants to stay visible, he could go back to the House of Representatives. There has been such a large chair dance (three MPs left in the summer, two of whom submitted their seats) that there is still room there. At NSC, the estimate is that Veldkamp’s principle about Israel can do well with potential voters. But the precise consequences of (again) a historic day in the era sheaf can be foreseen for anyone.
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