On the couch with TV show Linda’s Winter Month Prime Minister Mark Rutte shakes up the anecdotes. It is December 2020, a heavy corona year full of painful political decisions is behind him. But here, in a studio disguised as a winter chalet, he manages to rediscover the lightness and make the audience and hostess Linda de Mol laugh.
It is about his ‘old Nokia’, a well-known recipe for success in Rutte’s image campaign as a ‘simple man’. The prime minister tells of the time he accompanied former European Commissioner Neelie Kroes on a trade mission to San Francisco, where they met Tesla boss Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Kroes had warned him beforehand: ‘For God’s sake, don’t show that weird old Nokiaa of yours’. Thoughtlessly he had recorded the thing, to which Cook reacted in shock. Rutte, laughing: ‘I say: sorry, I’m getting rid of it!’
Saab, bicycle, upstairs apartment: Rutte does not care about beautiful things
Together with his ‘classic Saab’, his bicycle and his ‘simple upstairs apartment’, the Nokia regularly returns in Rutte’s stories. He is not attached to beautiful things, he tells over and over again. “You know what I think is luxury?” he says to De Mol. ‘That I see a book that I would like to have, and then I can just buy it.’
Rutte’s Nokia made the news again on Wednesday. For years, the prime minister erased text messages from his phone every day, because otherwise the device would become too slow, according to him. He only forwarded messages that he himself considered relevant for archiving to officials. It is no longer clear whether he made the right decisions.
Experts are disgraceful. According to professor of constitutional law Wim Voermans, Rutte even violated the Archives Act and the Open Government Act (WOO). But Rutte himself sees no harm in it. The limited storage space is simply part of the otherwise fine device, he thinks.
Rutte: ‘My thumbs are too fat for an iPhone’
But why would a prime minister, who receives dozens of messages every day, even want to use such an old device? A search through digital archives yields a jumble of explanations. “I never really learned to tap an iPhone quickly,” he once told Germany’s Handelsblatt† In an interview with magazine marguerite he told me that his thumbs are “too fat” for an iPhone.
Or is it a traumatic experience from the past that played a part? In 2008, VVD MP Mark Rutte wrote a message on his blog. “Went to Dance Valley today. Nice, but less good news is that my mobile phone was stolen (and I’m quite addicted to that..). I notice that annoying messages have been sent from that mobile. Apologies to whomever it may concern.’
His phone was later found by a friend of a Radio 538 DJ. Rutte expressed his relief in the radio show. “There’s all kinds of songs in there that I’d like to keep confidential,” he said. Nothing was known about the content of the messages sent, or whether sensitive information had been stolen.
According to Rutte, there is another advantage: ‘I can’t join an app group.’
In March 2018, Rutte’s telephone use was again discussed when he was interviewed by students at Leiden University. Why does he have two phones? And why an old Nokia at all?
It is a practical choice, says Rutte, according to the report of the university newspaper mare† “I can drive in nails with it.” In addition, his Nokia would be too old for listening devices, unlike his smartphone. “So if I come from abroad my iPhone has to be bulldozed, but I can keep my Nokia with me,” said the prime minister. Security experts partly agree with him at the time, although a Nokia can also be eavesdropped according to them.
There is another advantage, Rutte tells the students. ‘I can’t join an app group. I see people in my environment becoming overwrought because they have to keep up with all those groups, while I walk through life fairly relaxed.’
On the couch with Linda’s Winter Month Rutte will return to his Nokia in December 2020. “It’s not so much frugality,” he says. “Yeah, that Nokia is doing well, actually, so I like it. You can easily text on it.’ Isn’t it also because people like the fact that our prime minister is an ordinary man?, asks De Mol. Rutte: ‘No, you can’t play that, can you, that normal thing of mine. You can’t keep up with that.’