Mark Rutte resigned and nobody knows what's next
It's anybody's game
Last week Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte stepped down after thirteen years in office. His resignation followed the collapse of his cabinet over a disagreement on asylum policy.
Rutte did not have to step down. He could have stayed on as party leader of the VVD and simply run again in the next election.
So why did the cabinet fall, and why did he resign?
Scapegoating family reunification
Simply put, the cabinet (Rutte IV) was made up of two parties on the right and two parties on the left. On paper, the cabinet fell because these two sides of the coalition could not come to terms on family reunification for asylum seekers.
And FYI, the asylum system in the Netherlands is seriously broken. I wrote about the severity of these problems—like overcrowding in reception centers and a systemic inability to quickly process applications—in detail a few weeks ago.
In negotiations, Rutte demanded the other parties agree to a two year waiting period for family members joining refugees already living in the Netherlands, and limits to the entry of their children.
The two parties on the left, particularly the ChristenUnie, would not agree to anything policy impacting children. “Parents and children belong together,” they said.
Doesn’t this seem like relatively minute issue for the cabinet to collapse over? The children in question aren’t even in the country yet. Whereas in the Netherlands on a daily basis we are dealing with, you know, the housing crisis, insane drug violence, environmental disasters (nitrogen, the Groningen earthquake mess, climate change), the cost of living, etc etc.
The thing to understand about Rutte IV is that the coalition parties were always fairly aligned on economic issues and far apart on social and cultural issues. Immigration policy was a weak point between them, and a good place to push on… if you wanted the cabinet to fall.
It seems that Rutte deliberately refused to compromise on family reunification so that cabinet would collapse, with the idea that he could reform his coalition government with stronger and more popular right-wing parties, like potentially the BBB, the new and initially farmer-focused party which won big so in provincial elections in March that it now (so suddenly!) is the largest party in the Netherlands.
Although the right-leaning parties might tend to agree on more cultural issues like immigration, they are far apart on economic issues like pensions and health care. A more right-wing coalition could very well have the same fragility problem as Rutte IV, just over different issues.
Why Rutte resigned
Mark Rutte is a “master political strategist,” as The Economist put it:
He stands head and shoulders above the other politicians in the Netherlands… and he’s left a long stream of corpses in his wake, of leaders of other parties who have had to resign over affairs from which he himself has emerged unscathed. That ability emerge from scandals has given him the nickname “Teflon Mark.”
And as it turned out over last weekend, the most Teflon-y thing he could have done was resign; a motion of no-confidence was taken off the table when he stepped down.
He must have calculated that he might not win the next election, and understood the general sense that’s taken over in the Netherlands in the last year or two: that his time was up, and that there were one too many “corpses in his wake.”
What’s next
Rutte will stay in office until the elections on November 22, and afterwards, until the next cabinet is formed.
Which could take a while—it took ten months to form Rutte IV. There are currently twenty parties and individual lawmakers in the Dutch parliament and it’s hard to form a coalition in such a fragmented environment.
It is completely unclear who might be the next prime minister of the Netherlands.
Minister of Justice Dilan Yesilgöz will take over as leader of the VVD—but it’s unlikely the VVD would win premiership again. Dutch people seem ready for a change.
Sigrid Kaag, who in 2020 looked like she might have a shot at becoming the first female prime minister, stepped down as leader of D66 last week, due to overwhelming threats of violence her and her family. (I wrote about the background of this disaster a few weeks ago.)
Wopke Hoekstra, party leader of the formerly powerful CDA, who has been pictured recently looking very tired, also stepped down last week. Dennis Wiersma, a promising VVD member, also stepped down a few weeks ago because he couldn’t stop screaming at his colleagues.
The point being, it’s not just Rutte’s resignation; there are shakeups all over the highest levels of Dutch politics.
If I had to guess who the next PM would be right now… I would put my money (money I was prepared to lose) on Pieter Omtzigt, a popular centrist who has taken Rutte to task for his failures in the past. But… he left the CDA and doesn’t have a party. So he would have to join one, which seems unlikely, or start a new one, which seems hard, and he’s also recovering from a burnout and maybe not be exactly campaign-ready.
In any case, a new political era is coming to the Netherlands at the same time that one woman who rose to national prominence just dropped out of the game out of fear for her safety, young people are becoming too intimidated to join at all, and increasing political fragmentation makes consensus in this historically collaborative country harder than ever.
Who knows what will happen next. “The political battlefield is completely open,” according to de Telegraaf, whose polling this weekend found that that 42 percent (!) of people plan to vote for a different party than they did in the previous election.
I’ll be keeping an eye on how the new political landscape takes shape.
🥳 Leuke Dingetjes
Dutch researchers have found that birds are deploying anti-bird spikes usually attached to window ledges and roofs to protect their nests.
“That they use it so cleverly is insane,” said biologist and researcher Auke-Florian Hiemstra, pictured. “That anti-bird material is used to make a nest, which in turn creates more birds, I find that hilarious.”
Dutch homes don’t have front lawns!
Interesting video about the “sane suburbs” of the Netherlands, pointing out how much more functional Dutch neighborhoods are than those in North America.
They attribute this especially to a reliance on townhouses rather than single-family detached homes and narrower streets, among other clever Dutch urban planning elements that I have lived here long enough to stop noticing.
A new album from Sigourney K
Sigourney K, who did the vocals on the 2022 Dutch mega-hit “Vluchtstrook,” put out a new album full of Nederpop gems last week. “Lovey Dovey” with Ronnie Flex vibes.
*all typos in this post are definitely deliberate