‘Teflon’ Dutch PM Rutte finally slips up

Bike-loving Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s decade-long ride at the front of the political peloton was cut short on Friday, but he may find himself back in the saddle before long.

Once dubbed “Teflon Mark” because scandals never seemed to stick to him, the 53-year-old resigned along with his cabinet over a row that saw thousands of families wrongly accused of child benefit fraud.

With some parents racially profiled during the investigation, the affair underscored criticisms of the Dutch state under Rutte, including an addiction to frugality and a failure to tackle systemic racism.

The scandal has now tarnished the Liberal leader’s carefully honed image as a plain-speaking, pragmatic politician whose traditional values have chimed with voters in the Netherlands since 2010.

Yet with elections due anyway in two months, and Rutte set to stay on as caretaker premier to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, the resignation may in fact change little in the Dutch political landscape.

Rutte indeed arrived for Friday’s crunch cabinet talks in the same low-key style he uses for any other day at the office — alone on his bicycle, jokingly nicknamed the “Rutte motorcade”.

– ‘Habit and tradition’ –

“He just seems to be particularly well suited to the job of politician,” Pepijn Bergsen, a research fellow in the Europe programme at Chatham House in London, told AFP in 2020.

“Particularly in a political system like the Dutch one, where even more than other places it’s about keeping these really big coalitions of different types of groups together, and he’s really good at that.”

Rutte himself is a self-described “man of habit and tradition” and has lived his whole life in The Hague, where he lives in the same flat he bought after graduating, drives a second-hand Saab when not cycling, and volunteers as a teacher.

His bachelorhood sparked media speculation about his sexuality a few years ago but he has deflected questions, saying merely that he was “happy” with his life.

Rutte was the youngest of seven children. His father Izaak was a trader, while his mother Mieke was the sister of Izaak’s first wife, who died in a Japanese internment camp in World War II.

Rutte initially wanted to be a concert pianist, but graduated in history and went on to work for Anglo-Dutch consumer giant Unilever as a human resources manager.

That burnished his credentials to enter the liberal, pro-business VVD party he has led since 2006, becoming premier in 2010.

His affable personality hides killer political instincts that have enabled him to build three coalitions, during which he has seen the Netherlands through the financial crisis and the first year of the coronavirus pandemic.

– ‘Mr No’ –

Those instincts have also repeatedly helped him dodge political trouble.

His first coalition was controversially supported by the far-right party of Geert Wilders, and collapsed in 2012 when Wilders pulled out of austerity talks — but Rutte survived to come first in subsequent elections.

He has been criticised for pandering in pursuit of votes, such as when he went tough on immigration to see off Wilders in elections in 2017.

In 2018 Rutte was forced to backtrack under intense political pressure on a tax break aimed at luring foreign firms to the Netherlands.

There will be few tears for his resignation in other European capitals, where Rutte has made few friends with his constant pushing of Dutch-style austerity.

He became a hate figure in Greece for the Netherlands’ tough stance on EU bailouts, while last year he was dubbed “Mr No” for leading a group of countries dubbed “The Frugals” in blocking a Covid-19 rescue package.

The benefits scandal has meanwhile been simmering under the political scene for a couple of years, with deputy finance minister Menno Snel resigning over it in late 2019 while Rutte and his cabinet stayed on.

Throughout, “what he’s always had has been that perception of being a competent governing figure,” said Bergsen, a former economic policy advisor to the Dutch government.

The Dutch’s government’s resignation has now called that reputation into question.

dk/tgb