Setting standards for society is loved by most politicians, and that’s a good thing: it’s their job. But sometimes the House also tries to set standards for itself, and that’s a different story.
For example, last year parliament was dissatisfied with its own functioning, and in mid-December a working group led by Nestor Kees van der Staaij (SGP) came up with recommendations for improving the quality of the Chamber’s work.
One of the problems is that parliament is constantly producing too much politics: the House spends hours every week voting on hundreds of motions. No one can keep up with this anymore.
The result: the House itself also rarely has ready which motions it has actually adopted. That is why the working group wants to drastically restrict their motions and recommended as a ‘principle’ that ‘one or two motions per political group [per debat] should be sufficient”.
This report was just a month old this week – and the debate over the government statement showed that half of the participating groups did not follow the advice of their own working group.
It is no surprise that the PVV deviated the most with eight motions – that party only respects its own standards anyway. But it was remarkable that SP and BBB (both six motions) and D66 (three) also ignored the advice: these factions were actually part of the working group.
So MPs may then continuously standardize others – it does not mean that they also allow themselves to be standardized.
It fit in a week in which the same Chamber did not know what to do with the xenophobic slander of the PVV and the conspiracy fair of FVD.
A minority opposed the norm of the two that the majority demanded. The drifting chairman could not find a solution: on Tuesday the PVV was allowed to do everything, on Thursday the FVD was allowed less. It ended Thursday evening in swearing between MPs on the floor of the national assembly hall.
So much for the exemplary function of The Hague. You thought: later on, people will scorn that society tried in vain in 2022 to set a good example in the House.
There is also a more fundamental issue here. For fifteen years it has been the practice that image-defining debates are dominated by PVV resentment, and what is often forgotten: this has also distorted the idea of what politics is.
You see it as improving things. This week you had a few examples (take The Lancet who sees the end of the pandemic approaching), but also afterwards doom and disappointment returned to the parliamentary debates.
Ideals, hope, expectation, belief in progress: they have all ended up on the margins of national politics.
Grumpiness about others, and the desire to normalize their wrong behavior and life choices, has become a central ambition. At the PVV, that is the loss of, as the foreman says, “my beautiful Netherlands” mixed with the fear of the threats he receives.
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And numerous parties have adopted this format, whether consciously or not: glorification of their own electoral group, which is partly driven by aversion to opponents.
The PvdD wants to save the planet and the animals, and finds the ideal enemy in the agricultural sector. BBB supports rural areas and agriculture, and opposes conservationists and animal activists.
PVV, FVD and JA21 stand up for the traditional Netherlands, and wish to standardize or reject new Dutch citizens and migrants. Think, BIJ1 and Volt stand up for the new Dutch and turn against xenophobic traditions in society and politics. Etc.
For example, you can redraw the political map of the Netherlands in groups of parties that can (continue to) exist because they are opposed to each other. Schemes of mini-polarization, which occurs less between broad blocks (‘left against right’), but more intense between relatively small groups.
It also explains that traditional middle parties (PvdA, CDA) are crumbling electorally or partially overlap (VVD, D66, GroenLinks) with voters of new parties.
Resistance to identity as a political organization mechanism is also waning as a result. Because of the pillarization this has always existed, but mixed with brotherhood as an ideal. Current identity politics, whether progressive or conservative, are electorally effective mainly because they dare to individualize and put private choices on issues such as Zwarte Piet or veganism on the agenda.
Only: it’s harder to compromise on identity than, say, billing. So identity is also more likely to increase feelings of politically motivated hostility, and thus the danger of threats.
And if threats take epidemic proportions, as they are currently, partly fueled by the corona crisis, the ultimate consequence is that the fraught moments of parliamentary debates are about politicians themselves. About who is threatened, why, and from what angle.
The Hague has ended up there this week with the debate on the government statement. The PVV leader feels threatened, so does the Minister of Finance, numerous MPs, the Minister of Justice and Security, and so on. So that the image of the debate on Tuesday resembled threatened politicians who, as symbols of a faltering system, no longer know how to control themselves.
The paradox is that alarmism is often a way out of putting themes on the agenda. Van der Staaij pointed out on Tuesday that “there is increasingly talk about ‘crisis'”, we have the “corona crisis, climate crisis, asylum crisis, housing crisis and nitrogen crisis”. Only then do politicians feel the space to intervene.
How ironic: only the superlative of negativity helps to improve things.
So it seems elementary that parties find new ways to propagate faith in progress again.
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Not to condone dubious government operations (Groningen!). But to get rid of the idea that politics is more than domination over others.
It primarily asks that ‘The Hague’ PVV and FVD continue to point out their failures. When this week the only PVV member of the European Parliament (EP) switched to FVD, after Baudet previously lost four MEPs to other parties, this meant that all five MEPs elected for PVV and FVD in 2019 now serve another party. Ergo: the two who constantly complain in The Hague about the low level of democracy, turn out to have a scratch-off democracy themselves.
It also requires that the House do something about the verbal freedom with which the PVV has been allowed to stretch the standards for fifteen years. The only way out of this week’s chaos is for the House or its president to publicly adjust their own standards – and then, for a change, comply with them.
But the most important thing seems to be that after all these years, politicians realize that they no longer only have to propagate people’s unease. That politics can also be a desire for optimism – for the better, the higher. The idea that there will really be more affordable housing, that it makes sense to contribute to climate improvement, that an end to the pandemic is possible.
And above all: that the permanent exhibition of enemy images only helps politicians who want to incite. While brotherhood is a perfectly normal desire for people, just like reasonableness, which, by the way, would also make it easier for politicians to accept standards.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 22 January 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of January 22, 2022