Journalist, unappointed business sector spokesman and tv personality has livened up the coalition process, says Giles Scott-Smith on the Holland Bureau.

Jort Kelder, a regular on Dutch TV discussion progs, is guaranteed to produce political opinion of a controversial nature. The man who put Quote into the big time, and who runs a nifty website with his ever-present braces as trademark, Kelder has nurtured himself into the position of spokesperson for the Dutch business sector.
Now that the Queen has finally named two informateurs – Uri Rosenthal for the VVD and Jacques Wallage for the PvdA – the path to Paars Plus is wide open. (Why we needed a week of formateur Tjeenk Willink to announce this is beyond me, but maybe I am missing some of the subtleties of the royally-ordained cabinet formation process).
With this result now looming, Kelder seized the moment for a nice broadside in the NRC last weekend (’stop de rituele formatiedans, installeer een zakenkabinet’).
During the election campaign Kelder took every opportunity to bang on about how stupid it was that the political leaders avoided the bad economic situation and kept on pestering each other about ‘incidentals’ like tax relief and immigration policy.
Now, almost a month since the elections, he’s had enough. We knew well beforehand that it was going to be difficult to form a new cabinet. The elections produced exactly the splintered result that we expected. Weeks later we are still stuck, as Kelder puts it, in the ‘formation-dance’. And worse – even though the Right won, the Left are now going to govern. Scandal! Time for a change.
For Kelder its time to abandon all the parties, each with their own particular interest groups, for ‘a real meritocracy’ – a ‘business cabinet’, made up of professionals who know how to run things in the long term and who don’t get caught up in short-term media-hype (Hague) nonsense.
Its time for real men! Disagreements are not to fought out endlessly in parliament but can be immediately solved by referendum. And the Left clearly hates the rich so much that they have made them ’the new Jews’ who can be blamed for everything.
Kelder does have some good points. The fluctuating winds of the Dutch electorate have produced an increasingly unstable situation, which opportunists like Wilders have benefitted from.
The traditional Left-Right distinctions are fading out, so that voters no longer associate with one party (he rightly states that less than 2 % of the population is now member of a party) and shop around according to whim and wealth. So its time for a new entrepreneurial elite to break through the impasse and get things done: Jaap Maljers, Wiebe Draijer, Tex Gunning, to name a few.
The Dutch political system also allows outside experts to be named to ministerial positions, so this is all within the bounds of possibility.
This is all very well, but he does mess up his argument with some real clangers. If he dislikes the way that the country has fallen into the hands of a constantly shifting under-layer (onderlaag), why give this group greater power through referenda?
And if he is so worried that the Netherlands is slipping down the list of ‘knowledge-economies’, no longer the model country (gidsland) that it is supposed to be, are not those nations that succeed in this area – he names Finland, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Austria, and Denmark – some of the most stable democracies around?
Do we really need a business elite to sort out what bog-standard politicans can apparently do elsewhere? Especially when he complains that only in Scandinavia are income taxes higher. Thats right, Jort – maybe they invest the extra tax money in their successful knowledge-economies! No kidding!
And what about this – ‘Endlessly talking politicans have produced empty state treasuries and top-heavy welfare states for the parliamentary democracies.’ Empty state treasuries? I seem to recall this was due to the need to fill huge financial holes left by the wonderfully functioning private financial sector with public money……maybe I’m too cynical, but forgive me for wanting to avoid those kinds of people being in charge.
Whatever the blatant inconsistencies, it is still a joy to read Jort Kelder. He comes across as a kind of 21st century mix of T.S. Eliot, Plato, and Milton Friedman, calling for the new Guardians to seize control, maintain cultural standards, introduce a flat tax, and keep the plebs in line.
Churchill, as ever for these kinds of thinkers, is the perfect model, the man who stood alone as the enemy was allowed to rise because of everyone’s ignorance. Churchill, scourge of the Nazis – and architect of the WW I Gallipoli disaster, violent oppressor of the 1926 General Strike, and supporter of eugenics for the lower classes.
What about Kelder’s suggestion for a voter exam: ’Whoever is too lazy or too dumb to know the basics about democracy, economics and society, will not receive a ballot paper.’ This is great stuff, just when the cabinet discussions were starting to get boring. Thanks Jort.
For more from the Holland Bureau, click here