Mark Rutte’s eyebrows will also have risen on Wednesday evening when MP Daan de Neef announced that he is leaving the VVD party. De Neef says he can no longer agree with the party’s ‘ice cold’ asylum policy.
“I had counted on humanity after a week in which a baby died in Ter Apel and Doctors without Borders spoke of an emergency,” De Neef writes in a statement. ‘But that compassion failed to materialize and, to my taste, an ice-cold approach was taken in its place. I cannot and will not defend this. And I’m not going to do that either.’ He will give up his seat as of next Tuesday.
De Neef does not have a great reputation outside the party, but all the more within it. He was a confidant of party leader Mark Rutte for a long time. Until 2018, he was even the speechwriter and strategic advisor to the Prime Minister. After eighteen years of membership of the VVD, he became a Member of Parliament in March last year. Rutte will not be comfortable with the fact that De Neef is breaking with the party.
Nitrogen rate
Certainly because it is not the first time that a VVD member with a different opinion has moved. After twelve years of monopoly in the party, during which party congresses devalued into applause machines, the authority of the man who won four elections in a row is suddenly no longer self-evident.
Small cracks were also visible earlier this week, when the VVD summit defended the new asylum agreement at a members’ meeting. The general atmosphere there was not that members thought the course was too right – like De Neef – but that the party was not hard enough for asylum seekers. Several members argued for a total asylum stop and went further than their party leader Rutte, who emphasizes that international agreements prevent the arrival of refugees from being completely shut down.
In June, VVD members also turned against the party leadership’s nitrogen rate. At a party congress, a narrow majority voted in favor of adjusting the nitrogen plans that Rutte had just defended with verve. Both the VVD leader and his newly appointed nitrogen minister Christianne van der Wal sat there in awe and seemed somewhat taken aback by the resistance in their own circle.
The time when the VVD was a lively debating party is long gone. The last known VVD MP who left of his own accord out of dissatisfaction with the course was Geert Wilders, who broke with the VVD in 2004. He thought that the party should take an even more right-wing course. Subsequently, his position became untenable and he started a one-man faction. After that, MPs still left, but usually only because a discussion had arisen about their integrity or because they had another job.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Even within its own ranks, it leads to growing concerns that there seems to be little left of the debating party that the VVD once was. In the past, a person like Ayaan Hirsi Ali stood out for her criticism of Islam, which was stronger than that of the party. A Member of Parliament such as the late Hans van Baalen was also allowed to express his EU criticism openly, even though it did not necessarily correspond to the party line.
That changed almost immediately under the leadership of Rutte in 2006. The now long-forgotten MP Anton van Schijndel was inexorably expelled from the group by the new party leader, because he had criticized the course of the VVD and the Ruth’s leadership. Then followed the power struggle with Rita Verdonk, after which Rutte mainly gathered confidants around him. In the cabinet, but also in the faction, which nowadays largely consists of former press officers, faction employees and civil servants. Apparently MP Daan de Neef (himself also a former spokesperson) also considered it impossible to openly express a different opinion within the party. Instead, he’s stepping up now.
It is not clear whether De Neef represents a larger movement in the party. For the time being, he has received little public support from the VVD. The other camp, which wants a stricter asylum policy, is more vocal. And then Rutte has to wait and see how his party responds to the new purchasing power package from the cabinet, which is partly paid for by higher taxes for the wealthy and companies – two measures that the liberals have long resisted for fear of offending the traditional supporters. . With the provincial elections approaching, the prime minister will not be completely reassured.