Fear has permeated the cabinet formation talks and it’s centred on what may happen when the next election comes around, writes Klaas Broekhuizen in the Financieele Dagblad.

Ah, those wonderful 1960s… every 50 something will sometimes pine for the days of transistor radios on the beach with pirate station Veronica playing the Beatles, the Stones and the Doors. These were the years when taboos disappeared and denominational dividing lines faded. They paved the way for the Labour party’s success in the seventies. To counteract this emerging social democratic might, three religious parties joined forces and became the CDA.
Labour has since lost its socialist plumage and churches stand all but empty. The days when people were told by politicians and priests alike who to vote for have long since passed. Now it’s the voters who tell politicians what they can and cannot do.
Clinging on
Without a clear, guiding ideology Labour and CDA can’t do more than cling on to power. What they fear most is defecting voters and their only answers to this is a bevy of populist measures which capture the public mood. And that mood is constantly monitored.
The parties that benefit from this ideological impasse are SP and PVV. They know what they stand for, whether it’s the socialist ideal or islamophobia and although neither of these can be backed up by hard scientific evidence a large part of the electorate are attracted to them all the same.
CDA politicians now say that Geert Wilders is very good at projecting images – as opposed to using arguments – and that perhaps they can learn from him. The truth is that the Christian Democrats were passed masters at it for centuries but that they have simply forgotten how to do it.
Fear
The formation talks are dominated by fear and it’s centred on the next elections. It made VVD leader Mark Rutte plump for a right wing cabinet straightaway: best to keep a powerful political rival close by. And if, come the next elections, an image can be projected that Wilders has been equally responsible for everything that may or may not have happened, he need not fear that the VVD’s right wing electorate will abandon the party.
The left wing wouldn’t have to worry either with CDA as the main scapegoat. After a mainly left wing cabinet, however, Rutte could face serious voter defection to both PVV and CDA.
Verhagen is thinking along the same lines. A government with Labour and VVD is safer in the long run. Even a political hot potato like mortgage tax relief could be tackled as it would make the VVD – the Christian Democrat’s great rivals on this issue – equally responsible for a decision on this point.
The marginal parties have nothing to fear. They know what they are all about and so do the voters. A bit like Labour and CDA fifty years ago.
This is an unofficial translation