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Spy suggestion prompts rare Dutch cabinet parliament walkout

An insinuation that Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Sigrid Kaag was recruited by “Western agencies” as a spy prompted a rare cabinet walkout on Wednesday during a parliamentary session.

The walkout in the lower house of parliament was triggered by a speech by far-right MP Thierry Baudet, as the government coalition and opposition parties were mulling the 2023 budget, announced a day before.

Instead of discussing numbers, Baudet — known for his provocative statements — set his sights on Kaag, who is also the leader of the progressive centre-left D66 party and the country’s finance minister.

Kaag, said Baudet, “studied at Oxford’s St Antony’s College, which is really nothing more than a training institute for Western intelligence agencies”.

“That means exactly the global elites who want to plan our lives behind the scenes,” Baudet said, prompting a furious objection by Kaag and an interruption by Dutch parliamentary chairwoman Vera Bergkamp.

“Where she (Kaag) studied has nothing to do with proceedings. I find this type of conspiracy about where she studied really out of place,” Bergkamp said.

But Baudet persisted, prompting Kaag and the entire Dutch cabinet to stand up and leave the plenary hall.

A few minutes later Prime Minister Mark Rutte alone returned, saying “this has crossed a line. This is unacceptable.”

Bergkamp, backed by a majority of MPs, then cut short Baudet’s speech after he refused to stand down and retract his comments.

The Netherlands on Tuesday unveiled an “unprecedented” 17.2-billion-euro ($16.9-billion) package to help citizens face soaring prices and double-figure inflation driven by the ongoing war in Ukraine.