The Dutch Find Their Dirty Harry

Good news from the Netherlands, my country of birth: a new government is in the works. It will build a bridge between the political centre and the nationalist and anti-Islamist politician Geert Wilders, who won the November elections. This deal concludes a gruelling government formation process.

The doomsday scenario of escalating polarisation between the centre and populist nationalism now seems averted. This is crucial for the health of Dutch democracy.

That said, the deal introduces a peculiar element: Wilders, who won the election, will not become prime minister; Dick Schoof will instead.

Mr. Schoof, an unelected professional bureaucrat, former spy chief, and deep state power player unknown to the broader public, hails from the national intelligence and security apparatus. He is stepping out of the shadows thanks to nomination by Wilders and three centre parties (namely New Social Contract, the Liberals, and the Farmer’s Party).

Surprisingly, Dutch citizens have been assigned their prime minister without any public deliberation on his selection and without him even committing to a policy programme, let alone accounting for it in any meaningful way. This course of events treats democracy poorly, and is even slightly authoritarian. Still, it could serve the national interest if it produces a serious government that will finally counter uncontrolled mass migration from the Islamic world and Africa.

But first, how did we get here? After Wilders won the election convincingly in November, the formation of a new government was not proceeding smoothly. Under more normal circumstances, a victory of this magnitude—Wilders won 37 of 150 seats; the second, third and fourth parties in the country’s splintered electoral landscape captured 25, 24 and 20 seats—would have resulted in Wilders leading a coalition government as the country’s prime minister. But Wilders is not a normal system politician. He is the crude populist indictment of the system, far too controversial for the prime ministership in the decent, consensus-oriented, and—yes, conformist—Netherlands.

Aside from being too controversial to be PM, Wilders is also too populist to have a solid party cadre at the ready. Although his Freedom Party has been in parliament since 2006, it has remained weak in human resources and organisational capacity. The party, for years no more than a glorified campaign vehicle, has no members (Wilders is the only member), no policy research institute, and few if any ties to civil society and to Dutch conservative intellectuals.

Wilders couldn’t appoint good ministers and undersecretaries drawn from his party’s ranks. But if he wasn’t going to nominate the senior members of government, who was? His surprising election win brought responsibility; at one point during the negotiations, Wilders even had a third of Dutch citizens behind him in the polls. In short, Wilders had to lead but couldn’t.

While the centre parties could theoretically sideline Wilders by instead forming a coalition with Frans Timmermans—who leads the alliance of Greens and Labour—they could not responsibly do so.

This would have permanently alienated a large portion of the electorate. Wilders not becoming prime minister—despite winning the elections—is hard enough for Wilders voters to swallow; him having no input in the government formation would have pushed things too far.

Besides, the Dutch electorate demanded substantial change by supporting Wilders en masse. The Dutch again want to be recognised as a nation under a national government that serves the nation’s interests, most pressingly, by acting against uncontrolled mass migration from troubled regions outside Europe.

For too long, Dutch political life and many leading institutions have been entirely dominated by an ideology of universalist humanism; a globalism, principally indifferent toward preserving national character; an ‘Anywhere-ism,’ in David Goodhart’s terms. 

Yet, perhaps the nation, the ‘Somewhere,’ the politics of place and particularism, is now indeed making a small comeback, restoring some of the balance and healing Dutch democracy. Or at least the four negotiating parties have overcome their colossal dilemma. Despite continuous moralising from the left-wing media (including targeted sabotage by the influential newspaper NRC, undermining the earlier prime ministerial candidate and popular former minister Ronald Plasterk, by falsely associating him with fraud), the four parties have agreed a deal: their respective party leaders will stay in parliament and not join the executive government, while at least half of the ministers, including the prime minister, will be drawn from outside of any of the four parties. The mandate for Schoof’s new government is right-wing, especially regarding migration.

Which brings me to Schoof. The Dutch public knows nothing about Dick Schoof, who spent four decades as a bureaucrat working behind the scenes. He was chief director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV), and director-general of the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD). Spectacularly, Schoof managed to say nothing policy-related at his first press conference in his new role as prime minister. Asked about his plans as PM, he said evasively: “My plans are what the parliamentary leaders [of the four parties] have agreed upon,” without providing anything in the way of an interpretation of that agreement.

The Dutch press trotted out the premature judgement that Schoof would be an empty vessel, a colourless technocrat, serving the four political bosses who gave him his assignment. But that is naive. That Schoof does not immediately tell journalists what he will do does not indicate that he wills nothing—that he has no ideology or goals or will initiate little as prime minister. No, in his evasiveness, there is power. True power often moves in silence and never answers on command. Power, as power, is not chatty with journalists.

The little we know about Schoof is that he is capable, disciplined, and ambitious, even power-hungry. He tried to become the director-general of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Defense at the same time; he drew mandates to himself that actually fell under another ministry; and he was the architect of the combined “super-ministry” of the Interior with Justice and Security, which concentrated power and within which he oversaw the formation of a new National Police. In his spare time, Schoof, aged 67, is a long-distance runner, running 90 kilometres weekly with monstrous willpower.

Again and again, he has pushed the limits of the law in securing the country. He had citizens illegally tracked online with fake accounts and an unauthorised agency infiltrating mosques. As chief of the Dutch secret service (AIVD), he was criticised for aggressively targeting the Cornelius Haga Lyceum—an Islamic high school where numerous teachers were propagating anti-Dutch Islamism. In his last position at the Ministry of Justice, he worked on a detention regime for troublesome asylum seekers, which the courts shot down.

Understandably, many, even in right-wing circles, are uneasy about the new prime minister’s assertive, daring, and at times creative approach to law and order. Indeed, it is far from sweet. However, if there is anyone who can translate the right-wing turn among the Dutch electorate into policy successes, it is this tough guy. The Netherlands has found its Dirty Harry.