When Mark Rutte took office as Prime Minister on October 14, 2010, few in The Hague saw a bright future for the then 43-year-old prime minister. Although Rutte had won the elections gloriously, as a VVD leader he had had shaky years. His leadership was often questioned. And he went to rule in a minority coalition with the CDA, with the support of Geert Wilders’ PVV. It was asking for political mishaps – and for an obscure ending as a pub quiz question. But Rutte turned out to be an unsurpassed survivor, a political talent such as you rarely see in The Hague. Whatever happened, whatever big or small crisis came his way: Rutte stayed. And so Rutte will become the longest-serving prime minister in Dutch history next week, with 4,310 days on the counter. And he overtook Ruud Lubbers (4,309 days). Stable leadership in a politically troubled time: it is a great achievement.
Also read this interview with Mark Rutte from 2020: ‘It’s quite exciting to give a TV speech’
Rutte seems to have grown as a person with his office. Dutch prime ministers are seldom visionary, sky-storming or groundbreaking. A prime minister, as has been the practice for decades, is a primus inter pares, who polders, regulates and listens to everyone. Rutte has shown that he meets these qualities. He often says he doesn’t do vision. Rutte is indeed never distracted by the issues of the day, is averse to appearances and can rule with both the left and the right. His method: he takes over political opponents, and always lets ‘junior partners’ in the coalition take the brunt of the blows. Governing with Rutte is dangerous, just ask the CDA, the PVV and the PvdA. In that sense, Rutte’s dullness is also a conscious strategy: others absorb the blows of the policy he has developed, he is always just invisible enough. Think of the allowance scandal, the receipt affair, ‘Hawija’, the corona crisis. One minister after another had to leave, but Rutte remained untouchable.
The dull appearance that characterizes many prime ministers often masks their ideological urge to act. Wim Kok (PvdA, Prime Minister from 1994-2002) reformed the Netherlands according to the ideas of the Third Way. Jan Peter Balkenende (CDA, 2002-2010) did the same with his views on a small government and a larger role for civil society organisations. Mark Rutte may often say that for vision you ‘have to go to the ophthalmologist’, he has indeed pursued a policy based on his core ideas. Again and again it is about his own responsibility. The self-reliant citizen will figure it all out for himself. So the basic grant was replaced by a loan system, newcomers had to pay for their own integration, and people with a distance to the labor market had to do their best to find work. The government has become more business-like and has moved away from the citizen. This led to numerous problems: an opaque allowance system, ethnic profiling at the tax authorities, the hunt for potential fraudsters and poorly functioning administrative organizations. Those problems radiate to Rutte. Too often the public administration was found to be lacking in integrity or lacking integrity. Too often it has also been about Rutte himself, for example in the matter of ‘function elsewhere’, his texting behavior or when the term ‘Rutte doctrine’ was used. Too often the integrity of the prime minister, who incidentally does not yet declare a cup of coffee, has been questioned. A blot on his premiership.
Also read: Rutte decided himself which text messages were important and which ones don’t – and that hurts
The fourth Rutte cabinet, which took office in January, aims to correct the mistakes made in the previous Rutte cabinets. This applies not only to the victims of the subsidy scandal or the natural gas extraction in Groningen, but also to citizens who have been abandoned by the government in other ways or have lost their confidence in recent years. Mark Rutte must therefore restore policy choices that the same Mark Rutte has made in recent years.
When the fourth cabinet took office, Rutte promised a new administrative culture. He was the right person to implement it. A claim that deserves skepticism. So far the picture is mixed. Rutte IV has great ambitions and spends a lot of money, with tens of billions for climate and nitrogen policy and the energy transition. But his cabinet is structurally failing in the files that Rutte is dragging with him after almost twelve years, especially the functioning of the government. Stability at the top is sometimes a virtue in uncertain times, but it should not become a goal in itself. Rutte has to prove that he can reinvent himself. If he does not succeed, his premiership has lasted one term too long.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of 30 July 2022