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There are 20 parties and independent lawmakers in the Dutch parliament and Prime Minister Mark Rutte, at some point over the past 13 years, has governed with almost half of them. But the glue that held the country’s fragmented politics together has come unstuck.
Rutte’s fourth coalition, which collapsed on Friday, will be his last after he announced that he would quit politics at the next election.
“He overplayed his hand deliberately, ruined his cabinet and brought absolute chaos to our country,” said Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, an MP with D66, one of the coalition parties that turned against Rutte, precipitating his downfall.
The resignation of the Netherlands’ longest-serving prime minister leaves a hole in Dutch politics. His successor faces a difficult challenge after multiple pressures fractured the nation’s traditional consensus model.
Rutte’s centre-right VVD party will elect a new leader this week, but none have the level of popularity he once enjoyed.
Rutte, 56, has shown great faith in Sophie Hermans, 42, his former political aide who chairs the party and is an elected MP. But Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, 46, the justice and security minister who is of Turkish heritage, won more personal votes in the last general election.
Adding to the difficulty of stepping into Rutte’s shoes will be the growing political fragmentation: his first coalition governments were formed of two or three parties, but his last one had four partners — with increasingly loud and powerful challengers on the outside.
Rutte’s centre-right VVD continues to be the country’s most popular party, but its size has shrunk over the years to just 34 out of 150 seats in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of parliament.
D66 and the centrist Christian Union party, which triggered his departure by refusing to accept Rutte’s request to toughen immigration policy, hold just 24 and five seats respectively.
Whether the next Dutch prime minister emerges from the VVD or another party, social, economic and environmental issues abound despite Rutte’s attempts to paper over them.
The Netherlands remains one of the richest countries in the world but its 18mn people are dealing with possible recession, high inflation and the impact of the war in Ukraine, given its reliance on gas.
Housing needs are so acute that in Amsterdam some students live in converted shipping containers and many adults are forced to live with their parents.
After the Dutch supreme court ruled the country had to cut levels of polluting nitrate emissions, the government tried to reduce the number of farms, particularly dairy and pig producers, to enable the development of houses and factories. This pitted cities against countryside and sparked violent protests by farmers last year.
D66 and Labour polled few votes in rural areas, while the upstart Farmer Citizen Movement (BBB) tore into the Christian Democrats (CDA) in provincial elections in March and came first. The CDA will also require a new leader. The BBB is ahead of the VVD in recent polls at 20.4 per cent.
Sarah de Lange, a politics professor at the University of Amsterdam, said Rutte’s resignation “blows the election right open”.
“Historically these departures of a long-serving prime minister in the Netherlands have always led to a major shift in parliament in terms of seats and innovative government coalitions,” she added.
Rutte has moved with the centre ground since first coming to power in 2010, when he led the VVD to its biggest victory.
His first government was a minority coalition with the support of Geert Wilders’ far-right anti-Islam Freedom party. After the parties fell out over the budget in 2012, he tacked left and formed a coalition with the Dutch Labour party, which lasted its full term until 2017.
But the rise of populists of right and left, aided by the Dutch proportional representation system, meant it was the last time just two parties could gain a majority in the lower house.
Rutte teamed up with the Christian Democrats, Christian Union and D66 for his next cabinet, which resigned after a child benefit scandal in 2021 but reformed after the election.
“Rutte excelled in finding ways out of impossible situations, or ‘goat tracks’ in Dutch slang,” said one person close to the government. But once he called a new election, support quickly drained away, the person added.
The Labour party and Greens, who have concluded an electoral alliance, tabled a motion of no confidence in the government on Monday.
“He became the issue. And that meant the end for him,” said the person.
In his four terms, Rutte became the EU’s second-longest head of government after Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.
He had to handle the aftermath of the MH17 plane crash in 2014, when some 193 Dutch citizens died after a Malaysia Airlines aircraft was hit by Russian-backed forces who fired a missile over Ukraine. In his resignation speech, Rutte said that incident had been his hardest challenge.
He maintained a frugal stance throughout the eurozone sovereign debt crisis but dropped the usual Dutch resistance to common debt by agreeing to the EU’s €800bn Next Generation programme, designed to boost the economy after the Covid-19 pandemic.
A former Unilever human resources executive who entered politics in 2002, Rutte was a natural dealmaker, say those who worked with him. He rarely lost his cool and kept in touch with the public by cycling to work and teaching at a school in The Hague every week.
Rutte has said he does not have any firm immediate plans but ruled out a big international job.
De Lange is not so sure, noting Rutte’s staunch support for Ukraine in its battle against Russian aggression and the timing of his departure, a year before the role of Nato secretary-general becomes available.
“He is a political animal at heart, I don’t see him doing anything else,” she said.
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