It would be like a rite of passage, if we would get on with it and actually pass through. But no, we got stuck in the rite and not in the passage. At national level my party seems one of those persons that love the sea, get frequently to the beach, walks into the water… but never takes the plunge. It is too cold. Or to wavy. Or our friends are not joining. It seems that we have been caught in a bad version of Groundhog day.
Maybe not for longer.
This time might be different. This time we lost elections miserably, getting about half of our previous votes. And perhaps because of that, perhaps because the social democrats are also dwindling, finally our politicians have join forces to try to make a government together, Green Party and Social democrats. The negotiations are ongoing, but by first time there is a spoken mutual commitment to stick together and try to enter the government that is being formed now.
But then, our natural reflexes kicked in, and our own critics went spewing all sorts of reasons why we should not form government now. I do wonder if these people really live in a movie set. Our party, the greens, is a minority party in this country. Our ideas are not only green, but also leftish. And whatever this country is, is not progressive. Our fellows citizens have been choosing conservative governments for a long long looooong time. So when I hear another of my fellow party members criticizing the choice of partners, I wonder what do they expect. Do they really believe that the first time that we would enter government would be because “the left” won the elections? Really? Are they so disconnected with the wishes and preferences of the rest of the country?
What I also wonder is why these people are actually members of a political party. The whole point of a political party is to convert ideas in policy. Which you can do when you are part of a government. Yet I have heard so many times that mantra “from the opposition it is also possible to be valuable”. Sure. Like in the way activists are valuable, pushing the government to do things that they would not. But that is not what a political party is supposed to be, a bunch of people pushing for others to change their route. A political party is, or should be, people winning elections in order to get the driving wheel.
Last but not least, we are demonizing our prime minister. Which, I concede, is rather easy for people of our political colors. This country have been electing Mark Rutte, a slick liberal (in the european sense of the word) for at least four elections. We, greens and lefties, despise him. And he is very despisable indeed. His last stunt, which brought the fall of his previous government, was to be co-responsible for the most evident case of institutional racism in europe after WWII. And yet he and his party won, again, the election trigered by his failed government. But do we have the luxury of taking the high ground and tell that our party will never enable another government of Mark Rutte? We don’t. And it is not even a luxury, it is a stupid wish. Because the problem is not Mark Rutte. It is not that important if we would be part of a government with him. It is not about “the optics”.
It is about a country that actually elected Mark Rutte. Do we like it? of course not. That is why we should try to do our work, which is to form government, with whoever we can, and prove then that we are actually an improvement for the country. We have been doing that for local politics already for a decade or two. It is time that we forget our repulsion for slick conservatives, and get to work, and outshine them at their own game.