How Mark Rutte recovered after the debate that almost cost him his head

On the Saturday before Easter, April 3, 2021, outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte had a lunch appointment with a JOVD friend from the past, Marco Schraver. Rutte had lived with him in one house at the end of the eighties, in Scheveningen. The restaurants were still closed due to corona, they couldn’t go to the Italian restaurant they used to go to. Four or five times a year, always on Saturdays and always from 1 pm to 2.30 pm. At the end of January they had gone for a walk through the city. They had bought cappuccino and a slice of pizza at the Bakplaats on the Grote Markt in The Hague.

Now they went for a walk again, but Rutte had informed Schraver that it was half an hour later. He was suddenly busy, he still had to meet via Zoom.

It was just after the nightly debate of Thursday 1 April, in which Rutte almost had to resign because of the affair about the ‘function elsewhere’ memorandum. Rutte had looked tired on Friday morning. So are his officials. The Ministry of General Affairs had worked through the night: decisions and scenarios had to be ready when the prime minister and perhaps all VVD ministers resigned.

At the end of that Friday, he was met by journalists at his ministry: why did he think he could remain prime minister? Rutte, with a straight face, started talking about the election results. In recent years, he said, everything had gone right and everything had gone wrong. He called the result of March 17 “the result of the average”, and he himself had obtained almost 2 million preferential votes.

If the PVV motion of no confidence had been passed, he also said, the journalists would now be interviewing him at the VVD party chairman’s chamber. “Then I would have limited myself to the position of party chairman.”

‘boohoo’

He hadn’t thought for a moment, he later told those around him, to leave politics. If you stepped out of yourself, you were really gone. Even as leader of your party. And if not, you still had a chance.

At the Binnenhof, Rutte waved as usual at the people who were watching that Friday. There were a few who clapped for him, there were also some who shouted ‘boo-hoo’. A man came up to him and told him not to stop. Ruth nodded.

That evening, around ten o’clock, Gert-Jan Segers of the ChristenUnie called. He told Rutte that there would be an interview with him the next day in the Dutch daily newspaper with a strong message. The elections were over and the cabinet formation, however difficult, had begun. But the ChristenUnie, Segers said in the newspaper, would not participate in another cabinet with Rutte as prime minister. He no longer trusted Rutte. He had lied, Segers thought, and fantasized aloud about another job for CDA member Pieter Omtzigt.

At the ChristenUnie they heard from Segers late at night that it had been a difficult telephone conversation. Rutte had hung up angrily.

Immediately afterwards, Rutte called his confidants in the VVD – also the experienced director Ben Verwaayen, one of his most important advisers. Segers’ words had hit him hard, Verwaayen could not remember that anything in the political game had ever touched Rutte so much. In Rutte’s opinion, it was now not about something he had said or done wrong, but about who he was, about his character.

Read the live blog of NRC here during the parliamentary debate of April 1, 2021, which Rutte narrowly passed

On Saturday, at the beginning of the afternoon, Rutte seemed to have completely recovered. He cheerfully walked through the city with his JOVD friend Marco Schraver.

What Segers said about him in the Dutch daily newspaper was seen as very harsh by many politicians in The Hague. And there was no sign of any doubts that VVD members might have had about him that week. They were all behind Rutte. His former campaign strategist Frits Huffnagel said in The Telegraph: “It is clear who this Easter Judas is.” Former Member of Parliament Ton Elias talked about “the ugliest face of politics” if you portray someone as the ChristenUnie had done with Rutte. On Radio 1, former minister Henk Kamp called Rutte the “most successful prime minister since the Second World War”, and he thought that the ChristenUnie “with seven times as few seats as the VVD” had a very big mouth.

Bee news hour said another former minister of the VVD, Melanie Schultz, that Rutte had always committed himself “with heart and soul” for the Netherlands and had always “protected” the coalition parties. “That he has come to stand alone in the House of Representatives,” she said, “that really hurts me to see.”

Hat on, backpack on

Already on Friday evening, after the phone call from Segers, the VVD had devised a plan for the next day. Rutte had to come into the picture, otherwise the idea could arise that he was lying on the ground, already almost defeated. The head of information arranged for Rutte to encounter two television teams at the end of the afternoon on Saturday, from the NOS and RTL. Just before Dick’s Snackcar on the Frederik Hendrikplein in The Hague. Rutte was on his bike. He had on a hat, a thick coat, and a backpack.

Rutte had to be in the picture that Saturday, otherwise the idea could arise that he was on the ground

What he would say was also carefully prepared. Rutte called himself “combatant”, “big problems” had to be solved in the Netherlands. According to him, the VVD had “radical ideas” about political culture, about “power and counter-power”, and he wanted to discuss these with other parties during the cabinet formation. What “Gert-Jan Segers of the ChristenUnie” had said had “not left him unmoved, of course”. It came “out of the blue”, he said several times. Segers had called him “on Good Friday”.

And if he only wanted to participate in a cabinet if Rutte did not become prime minister: “Gert-Jan Segers of the ChristenUnie” was not about that. It had not happened since 1977, Rutte said, that one party interfered in the personnel policy of another party. “That was when Joop den Uyl had ideas about who should put forward the CDA. We don’t have to go back to that.”

RTL wanted to know what he thought when Segers called him, but Rutte thought it had lasted long enough. “I am leaving. Have a nice evening, I think it was good that we could talk for a while.”

That Saturday afternoon he and his friend Marco Schraver bought cappuccino on the Grote Markt, just like last time, and pizza again.

“Have a peaceful Easter?”

Immediately after Easter, Rutte made jokes in the House of Representatives about his conversation with Segers. Wilders wanted to know from him who he had discussed the election of a new President of the House of Representatives – according to Wilders, D66 and the VVD had concluded a secret deal about this. “I have been in contact with many colleagues in recent days,” said Rutte. “For example, Mr Segers called me on Friday evening.”

SGP party chairman Kees van der Staaij smiled cheerfully and looked at Segers, who was sitting next to him. But Segers did not laugh. In the corridors of the House of Representatives there were VVD members who did not greet him. After Easter he had seen Rutte again. All party leaders had gathered in the Old Hall to discuss the cabinet formation. Rutte had only looked straight at Segers.

Rutte was very friendly towards Van der Staaij, who had supported a motion of no confidence against him a few days earlier. “Kees,” he called to the other side of the table, “Have you had a quiet Easter?”

“Yes,” said Van der Staaij. “I’ve been to Ouddorp.”

Ruth nodded. But he didn’t understand. “Outdoors?”

On the Saturday of the Nederlands Dagblad interview, Van der Staaij had informed Rutte that the “exceptional voting behaviour” of the SGP had only to do with that evening’s debate. And that he would like to discuss this with Rutte again. Rutte had thought it was a nice message, already on the following Wednesday they were sitting together in a meeting room of the VVD.

In his first conversation with informateur Tjeenk Willink, Segers said that he saw how bad personal relations had become in the House of Representatives, and that he wanted to do everything he could to improve them. Segers then sent a text message to Rutte: that he had said that to Tjeenk Willink. Rutte answered immediately, a week later Segers came to him for coffee in the Catshuis.

Segers said he should have slept over that interview first, and that it had become way too personal. The following Saturday there was a ChristenUnie conference, he went there to say so. “Would you do that, yo?” said Ruth. “You must remain whole.”

At the ChristenUnie they knew there was nothing else for it. Segers’ swipe at Rutte had led to deep divisions in the party. From a survey among ChristenUnie voters, again in the Dutch daily newspaper, it turned out that only slightly more than half supported the decision of the ChristenUnie faction not to sit in Rutte IV. And almost half thought he shouldn’t have come up with his fierce criticism at Easter.

Just before his speech, at the party congress in Veenendaal, Segers sighed deeply several times. Many people had “the perception,” he said, that he had “played too much on the man” and “too little on the ball” at Easter. He took that to heart, he had looked ‘in the mirror’. He now felt that the political culture that his party had so disliked “does not stand or fall with one man”. “We are also part of it.”

During the break of the congress, Rutte called. “Wow,” he said to Segers. “Wow!”

Insecure

After the summer, the ChristenUnie nevertheless negotiated a new cabinet with the ‘old’ coalition parties of Rutte III, VVD, CDA and D66. With Mark Rutte again at the table.

But at the VVD you could even hear about Rutte in the autumn of 2021: he is not the same as before the debate of 1 April. At the negotiating table, he sometimes made an insecure impression on the others. If his co-negotiator Sophie Hermans was not there, he didn’t seem to want to participate either.

Rutte had looked tired for months. What played into it, people around him thought, were the serious threats that The Telegraph at the end of September 2021. Rutte was extra secured, which was difficult for him. He didn’t want it to stand out either.

A JOVD friend from the past texted him: he looked bad on television, was he okay? “Yeah,” was the reply. It was the lighting.

Very occasionally, Rutte showed that he sometimes thought about his life after politics. In a meeting with students from Leiden UniversityIn late October 2021, along with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he said he would have to attend training one evening a week to earn his teaching certificate. That was possible at Leiden University. “Fortunately, I can also teach, and earn an income from it.” He had already figured it out exactly like that.

Trudeau seemed worried for a moment. “No rush!” he shouted to the students, pointing to Rutte. “The world needs him for a few more years.”

This is an abridged version of a chapter from the new revised edition of the book ‘Mark Rutte’ by NRCeditor Petra de Koning, which will be published this weekend.