Mark Rutte wants to become party leader of the VVD again

Mark Rutte wants to become party leader of the VVD again. He says that in an interview The Telegraph. He says he is “very eager” to be prime minister for another four years.

And although it comes as no surprise to anyone – another candidate was no longer there after Klaas Dijkhoff announced his departure from politics – the other political leaders are now finally quite sure where they stand: they must campaign against a man who has been prime minister for ten years and will use his role as ‘statesman’ until the last second before election day. And opinion polls show that many voters are still far from tired.

read here excerpts from Petra de Koning’s book about Mark Rutte

It is the fifth time that Rutte (53) has put himself forward as candidate. After the first time in 2006, when he ended up in a fierce and chaotic party leader battle with Rita Verdonk, he has never had to deal with an opposing candidate in the VVD. Which does not mean that his leadership of that party has never been questioned. There were at least two moments when it was almost over politically for Rutte: in the summer of 2007 when he expelled Verdonk from the parliamentary party and almost tore the VVD in two, and two years later after his statement about the Holocaust denial, which he says should not be punishable.

But even in the summer of 2016, just before the campaign for the elections in early 2017, campaign strategists of the VVD still thought that the image of Rutte as the man-of-the-broken promises might no longer be changed. Every ‘hard-working Dutch person’ would receive 1,000 euros, the mortgage interest would not change, ‘not a cent’ of European money would go to Greece.

In The Telegraph Rutte then gave an interview in which he applied as party leader and said sorry for the promises he had not fulfilled. It turned out to be a successful tactic for the VVD: Rutte, as it had come across to voters, was only human. And when political opponents afterwards brought up those promises, he hardly responded. Didn’t he say sorry?

Risks due to corona

The VVD top knows that the corona crisis, with Rutte as the leader whom everyone looks at, offers the party every chance of success. According to the most recent Peilingwijzer, the weighted average of polls by I&O Research, Ipsos and Kantar, the VVD can now arrive at a score between 39 and 45 seats. In the previous elections, the party took 33 seats. In polls, the PVV is the second party with about twenty seats.

VVD members also assume that, apart from Rutte, many voters in an economic crisis have more confidence in their solutions than in those of other parties. That also helped Rutte with his very first election victory, in 2010.

View here a photo special about 10 years of Prime Minister Mark Rutte

Just before the 2017 elections, the VVD benefited electorally from a quarrel between the Netherlands and Turkey: Turkish ministers wanted to campaign in the Netherlands for a referendum, the Dutch government blocked that. Turkish President Erdogan then called the Dutch “remnants of Nazis” and “fascists”, and Rutte was given the opportunity as prime minister to say that the Netherlands would not be upset by Turkey.

Just last week, something similar happened: Erdogan called PVV leader Wilders a “fascist” and filed a complaint against him for posting a cartoon of Erdogan on Twitter. Rutte then took it with a serious face for Wilders and the freedom of expression and called Erdogan’s statements “unacceptable”.

It can help him again in the polls. But an election result is still a long way off and the VVD is fully aware that the corona crisis also poses risks for Rutte. Will voters continue to see him as the country’s dream leader if they fail to stop the second wave of contagion or if a third comes just before the election?

Through the dust

Two and a half weeks ago, Rutte took ample time in a parliamentary debate to admit what he himself had not done well in the fight against the virus. He thought he had put too much emphasis on people’s own responsibility and too little on obligations, fines and measures. According to him, those measures should have been much tougher before. He had also failed to deliver his message, for it had been “not effective enough.”

Was this already a ‘sorry’ from the upcoming party leader? A long interview was not necessary this time. In the corona crisis, there is now so much attention for the House of Representatives debates with Rutte that you saw his statements everywhere: Rutte had gone ‘deep through the dust’. He did that again after the hastily aborted Greece holiday of King Willem-Alexander. That, he said, had been his misjudgment.

So far, it does not seem that voters are blaming him for those mistakes. But the elections will only be in March next year: in politics that is still an infinite distance away.

You can find our file with more articles about Prime Minister Mark Rutte here.

In The Telegraph Rutte says that he does not want to campaign for the time being. He feels, he says, that he should focus all his attention on the corona crisis. Otherwise, it “doesn’t feel right.”