Rutte wins big in Dutch election

The results of the Dutch general election on Wednesday haven’t stormed the world’s headlines but they contain quite a few surprises and pointers to where Dutch and European politics are heading.

Altogether some 37 parties stood for 150 seats in the lower house of parliament at The Hague. Of these, 16 have passed the threshold to get at least one member in the new chamber. Mark Rutte, the incumbent prime minister – a legend for managerial rather than political skills – increased his share of the vote and the number of seats (to 35) for his liberal conservatives of the VVD, a gain of two on the 2017 election. Rutte is now the longest serving Dutch PM of the modern era, and this is his fourth election win in just over a decade.

In the next year or two Rutte becomes the EU’s senior head of a mainstream member government – the exception might be Viktor Orban of Hungary, who also came to the premiership in 2010, and had been PM for two years at the turn of the century. But, then, Hungary these days is seen a sui generis political culture.

Rutte will speak for the mighty Dutch economy, which has delivered one of the highest standards of living in Europe and the world, and with five multinationals, from Shell and Unilever to DSM,  whose turnover dwarfs the budget of the state.

Dig beneath the headlines and you will find some intriguing wrinkles, and some could turn out to be very big. The campaign itself was low-key owing to the Covid lockdown. Protests over the lockdown turned violent last weekend with the police out in force while back in January there was rioting across ten cities for three nights in succession.

Indeed, Rutte’s management of the Covid programme has drawn criticism. “On the whole people are saying that he didn’t do too well, but they couldn’t think of anyone better to run it,” says Titia Ketelaar, political correspondent of the leading Dutch daily, the NRC Handelsblad of Rotterdam. “It’s clear from interviewing people in the street across Holland that the approach to the vaccine, AstraZeneca particularly, has undermined confidence in the programme. Roll out has been slow, and there will be an enquiry about this.”

Dutch death rates have been pretty low – some 16,170 have died from a total of 1.17 million positive cases, from a population of 17.2 million.

The big winner among the main parties was the centre-left Democrats or D66, who after a five-seat surge are now comfortably the second party in the new parliament with 24 seats. Hearing the results, the new party leader Sigrid Kaag danced a jig on a table at party HQ. Kaag has challenged Rutte on his uncritical attitude to Dutch membership of the EU. She is a charismatic figure, well known on the world stage before she took over the party in 2017. She was the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon from 2015 to 2017, and before that had led a UN team overseeing the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons.

Her high profile has drawn extraordinary hate mail on social media, however. “One in four messages on Twitter about the election were about her, real sexist hate messages,” says Anja, a Dutch diplomat. “Who said this is liberal, progressive nation ?”

In the outgoing government she held the portfolio for foreign trade. She is sure to demand promotion to a more prominent ministry in the new coalition when it is formed – a process notoriously tortuous in the Netherlands.

With overseas votes still to be counted, it is not clear if Rutte can command a parliamentary majority with just a three-party alliance of the VVD Liberals, the Democrats 66, plus the CDA Christian Democrats – the partnership of the outgoing government. Rutte rules out a deal with Geert Wilders’ anti –Islamic, anti-EU Freedom Party, which dropped votes to take 17 seats. This means he could seek an alliance with the smaller CU Christian Union – a pro-life Protestant party with progressive views on the environment but a strong stance on abortion and euthanasia. On these two litmus paper policies it is directly opposed to the liberal-left D66 – and euthanasia is still a very hot issue in the Netherlands.

For all the public ennui among the commentariat, the Dutch take democracy seriously – yesterday’s turnout was more than 82 per cent. Nonetheless, the road to forming a new government could be a very weary process. The CDA, for example, may not be willing to join because its poll losses are being blamed on being a junior partner in the outgoing government.

It is now the business of the senior official appointed by the King, the formateur, to open coalition talks. Last time round it took 225 days to form the coalition led by Rutte after the 2017 election.

A novelty of the election is the entry of four new parties into the Dutch parliament, says Titia Ketelaar of the NRC. “The most interesting is Volt, a pan-European party, and a new farmer’s party, which has gained a seat. Volt is spreading across Europe and believes that some issues such as climate change have to be tackled on a cross-Europe basis and not by individual national politics.”

The main protest at the election against the Covid restrictions was mounted by the Democratic Forum of Thierry Baudet, a self-styled philosopher-king of Dutch politics, and the darling of the ultra-libertarian right. “He didn’t exactly campaign against vaccination as such,” says Titia Ketelaar. “At one rally I was at he asked the crowd to raise their hands if they hadn’t had the vaccination – and when hundreds of hands went up, he shouted back , ‘I see I am talking to a beautiful and intelligent group of people.’”

Such posturing has led to the party splitting and four dissident members winning seats in the election. This may have fatally wounded the possibility of a populist alliance between Geert Wilders and Baudet. Together they might have made a formidable bloc in the new chamber. “Even so, the combined hard right vote across the parties has gone up from about 20 per cent to 27 per cent” says Anja, the public servant, “that could be ominous for the future.”

Rutte now looks set fair to be one Europe’s senior statesman – his reputation as a manager rather than politician, and an obvious lack of ideology, is sure to bolster his standing. He could be headed for a post like Nato Secretary General, or even a replacement for Ursula Von der Leyen should she be given an untimely early bath as President of the Commission.

However, it may not be entirely plain sailing for Rutte, says Ketelaar, as there are two important parliamentary inquiries into his previous government still ongoing. One is looking at a possible official cover-up of the seismic effect of gas exploitation in Groningen and the northern provinces, which apparently led to a string of small, but damaging earthquakes. The second inquest is into a scandal where numbers of Dutch citizens were falsely arraigned for fiddling social benefit payments. In the wings is a third, and potentially more threatening, inquiry into the laggard establishment and implementation of Covid measures.

“I don’t think any of these will be fatal,” says another source. “After all, so many parties in the parliament have been involved in possibly all three of these policy areas. So they aren’t going to touch him. Besides, I find this such a deeply conservative country – and very frustratingly so.”