Caroline van der Plas’ mother lays newspaper The Stentor on her ornate wooden dining table. She has put a plate of shortbread next to it. Rooibos tea steams from floral-patterned cups. It is the edition of Wednesday, March 15, Election Day. A cartoon version of her daughter features on the front page. She stands triumphantly on the debris of the coalition parties.
“A bit strange,” says former alderman (CDA) Nuala van der Plas-Fitzpatrick with an Irish accent, which makes it sound like framed. She keeps all the newspapers she comes across with her daughter on the cover, she says, “from NRC until Privately”. “It is also a special situation. From a tractor on the Binnenhof to, yes, where to actually?” She addresses her daughter, who is sitting next to her with a cup of coffee. “A big responsibility, Caroline. Your party will now have to stand firm.”
The two are sitting, with campaign leader Henk Vermeer and party employee Jesse Baak, in the living room of the house where the BBB leader grew up. Van der Plas-Fitzpatrick has left the nameplates on the doors of the children’s rooms. The text ‘Carolines room’ is surrounded with flowers, at ‘Andrews room’ a car is drawn. “Yes, that was still the case then,” laughs Van der Plas.
Downstairs hangs a large gold wall clock. It is half past two, Van der Plas has already voted, the camera crews have spoken. The exit polls come at nine o’clock, then the results evening of the party also starts. Campaign leader Vermeer is sitting under the clock, in his green suit. His work is done for now, for a moment. Almost then: there are two more press releases to be made. “One for when the party becomes the biggest, one for when we become the biggest winner.” He smiles.
Comparison with LPF
You don’t get used to the conversation on the radio being about her, says Caroline van der Plas in the car from the polling station in Okkenbroek to her mother in Deventer. The NOS party leaders debate of the evening before is discussed on Radio1. She whizzes through the Overijssel polder in Henk Vermeer’s electric car, which he himself describes as “a kind of airplane”. Vermeer is behind the wheel, Jesse Baak in the back seat.
It is the day that BBB can turn from a one-man faction in The Hague into a party with members of Parliament in all provinces. And now, says Van der Plas, “we have to stay focused.” The Senate is “a different kind of cake” than the House of Representatives, and “in the provinces we have to show that we can be the party we want to be”. Her task as party leader will be different, she says: she will soon have to be accessible to all provinces, “that will sometimes be difficult”. Van der Plas is already looking ahead to an expansion of her one-man faction in the House of Representatives: then it will become a lot easier.
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“All those comparisons with LPF”, Pim Fortuyn’s party that rose as quickly as it fell two decades ago, she thinks is exaggerated. “He had to go in no time set up a party a few months before the elections,” she says. BBB was founded in 2019. “When I see how we have done in recent years,” says Van der Plas, “I do not expect it to blow up”. Moreover, says campaign leader Vermeer, “this campaign is the sign that we can organize ourselves well. It was a kind of military operation.”
Van der Plas is not afraid of the same scenario as that of the Forum for Democracy. That party was the big winner in the previous Provincial States elections, but now, four years later, many members of Parliament and the Senate have left the party. Yet Van der Plas jokes a little later in her mother’s living room. “Are you ready for my owl of Minerva speech tonight?”, referring to the striking victory speech of FVD party leader Thierry Baudet four years ago. Jesse Baak looks from behind his phone and calls from the couch: “That will be the Godwit of Deventer!”