Dear Joost,
I would like to take you back to a significant moment in the cabinet formation.
Sigrid Kaag (D66) had gotten Lilianne Ploumen (PvdA) and Jesse Klaver (GroenLinks) in her attempt to turn Mark Rutte (VVD) another ball and to sideline Gert-Jan Segers (Christenunie) so that they riveted together with no turning back.
The PvdA would not step into Rutte 4 without GroenLinks, GroenLinks not without the PvdA.
And then it became Wednesday, September 29, 2021.
about that day writes NRC Handelsblad:
“Five weeks earlier, D66 leader Sigrid Kaag had told informer Johan Remkes in the Logement that she wanted to try it with the ChristenUnie instead of GroenLinks and the PvdA. To the astonishment of GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver and Lilianne Ploumen of the PvdA, who were also at the table. The morning before, they had agreed with Kaag and her co-negotiator Rob Jetten that they should only negotiate with six people: VVD, D66, CDA, GroenLinks, PvdA and ChristenUnie. They had gathered especially for this in the D66 faction room, at the invitation of D66. For months the VVD and CDA had blocked talks with GroenLinks and the PvdA as a ‘left bloc’, now it was time for a different plan. Because simply continuing to rule with the parties of Rutte III, and thus again with the ChristenUnie, was not something Sigrid Kaag had to think about, she said. “I’d rather have new elections.”
And now Klaver and Ploumen were put aside, right? In the Logement, when Kaag conveyed that message to Remkes, Ploumen had still texted her: dude, Sigrid, shall we sit together for a while? She got no response.
VVD and CDA were surprised and happy, they have wanted this for a long time. At the ChristenUnie, as is often the case, a feeling of heaviness prevailed: they would not have wanted to bear government responsibility for a while. And with all three there was doubt: did D66 really want this?
The left parties had no doubts at all. They heard nothing more from Kaag there.”
Sewn hard.
PvdA and GroenLinks, Ploumen and Klaver, had been driven into each other’s arms by Kaag, engaged in the hope of a place in Rutte 4 and then carelessly thrown into the garbage.
I think, Joost, that for once during this cabinet term, Sigrid Kaag and Mark Rutte will not have to count on the support of the PvdA and GroenLinks.
Rightly so.
No matter how left-wing Rutte 4 has become after Sigrid Kaag seized all power by threatening to take Rutte’s ‘job’ away through the “Here our roads separate” act and the HJ Schoo lecture, PvdA and GroenLinks will not remain the dumbest boy forever from too class.
So if those parties can take revenge for this sewing area in one way, it is by not acting as a support channel for Rutte 4 in the Senate, but heading for new elections (with one leader!).
I come to you now.
During the discussion of the coalition agreement on Thursday, I heard you explicitly hinting at support for Rutte 4.
If I remember correctly, you said: “This is not a threat, but JA21 has three seats in this Chamber and has seven on the other side (in the Senate). I know the coalition on the other side is six short. (…) Perhaps the parties gathered here around this agreement can take that into account.”
That’s right.
Rutte 4 has only 32 seats in the Senate, while 38 are needed for a majority.
And in the Senate you now have a seven-member group with senators that entered the Senate in 2019 thanks to Forum for Democracy and started its own business in November 2020 under the name ‘Fractie Van Pareren’ and continued after Annabel Nanninga’s maternity leave under the name ‘FractieNanninga/JA21’.
But it won’t be so, dear Joost, that a political opportunist like you (with a CV to which the CDA, the LPF, Een NL, Leefbaar Capelle, Leefbaar Rotterdam, FvD and JA21 have been credited since 2002) will the cabinet Rutte 4 help to get even one proposal through the Senate?
If I think you are indeed prepared to do that, then I must have misunderstood, Joost?
You don’t want to be the man who extends the political life of Mark Rutte as prime minister (and Sigrid Kaag as his puppeteer) even one day longer than strictly necessary, because he throws you alms?
No, right, Joost?
You founded that party as a safe haven for ‘right-wing’ voters, right?
Or are you just an eel in a bucket of snot?
Greeting,
JanD
PS. Two presents. ‘Cause I don’t know if it makes you happy a small jar or just from a big box.
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