Any party leader’s biggest nightmare is a party representative who doesn’t tow the party line and is not afraid to use the media to let everyone know about it. The SP seems largely immune to the problem. How does it do it? asks Wouter Bos.

Party leaders often have nightmares. One particular nightmare features several party representatives, all expressing different opinions on the same subject on national tv at an inconvenient time.
There are those democratic romantics who think this is a good thing. More than one opinion? Great! That’s what democracy is all about, isn’t it? And the rank and file of a party is made up of all sorts of people and why shouldn’t that diversity be reflected?
There is, of course, some truth to this. But a party must strive to be recognisable and three different party lines on every single issue would defeat the purpose. Timing is important too: there is more room for discussion before a decision is made than after. Any squabbles after the fact would only confuse the voter.
It’s easier said than done. The frustrated and the have-beens have always managed to find a way to air their contrariness. There’s always a journalist who will take them seriously. And MPs who chooses to go to the press with a personal opinion have a constitution on their side which recognises no political parties but does recognise any individual representative’s right to do their work without hindrance or consultation.
It will never be possible for a party to always present a united front and maybe that is just as well. But some parties manage better than others, and the SP manages best of all. We could, of course, brush this achievement off with a feeble joke about the party’s Maoist past and blind obedience but that would be doing it an injustice.
U-turn
In the past week the SP started an unprecedented u-turn towards accepting a policy it had always rejected. The publicity surrounding this change of course was a jewel of communicative brinkmanship. Stories, examples, jokes were all carefully synchronised. Every time an SP MP appeared he or she said: ‘We don’t like breaking points but making points’ until the joke started to wear awfully thin. But meanwhile a difficult exercise had been performed without a hitch. And not a dissident peep out of anyone. I confess to jealousy. If it had been the PvdA the party leader would have had to deal with letters to the press, an extra congress and at least three party committees.
How on earth did the SP manage it? The list of candidates provides a clue. 14 out of the party’s 15 MPs will be eligible again, an incredibly high score when you think that most parties refresh part of their parliamentary party at each election.
The SP is probably expecting to grow and it will want to fall back on experienced MPs. This is part of the reason but there’s more. Out of the first 40 candidates, 38 have political experience, 16 in parliament, 7 as MPs’ assistants, 9 in local politics and 6 who have been both MPs’ assistants and local politicians. There are only two candidates who don’t seem to have any political experience: a campaign leader at Greenpeace and a substitute public prosecutor.
Unique
Again, the SP is unique in this. No other party has the same wealth of political experience on its list. No other party has so few instances of people with non-political expertise going into politics – think entrepreneur, policeman, doctor or teacher, one or several of whom any political party would want on its list. No other party has the same number of MPs assistants and local politicians making the transfer to parliament.
All this leads me to four tentative conclusions. One: The SP produces politicians who know exactly what to do from day one. No need to explain how to put an issue on the agenda, how to formulate a motion or organise a majority: they have done it all before or seen it done from up close.
Two: The active SP politicians go back a long way. They share the same party training and have pursued similar careers. Having been part of the same political party process they will operate as a team to a greater extent than parliamentary parties with a large percentage of ‘outsiders’.
Three: A fairly inward-looking party culture such as this could limit the room for opposing voices.
Four: The almost exclusive recruitment from party political ranks may provide an additional explanation for the unshakeable faith of the average SP MP in the power of politics to cure society’s ills.
Wouter Bos (48) is a partner at professional services firm KPMG where he is responsible for healthcare. He was political leader of the PvdA and finance minister and deputy prime minister under Jan Peter Balkenende from 2007 to 2010.
This column was published earlier in the Volkskrant