Dutch politics

Holland’s role in the world

Dutch politics, Oh Those Crazy Cloggies, US Foreign Policy
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As explained in a 2005 diplomatic cable from the American ambassador in Den Haag:

SUMMARY: With the EU divided and its direction uncertain, the Dutch serve as a vital transatlantic anchor in Europe. As one of the original six EU members, the Dutch ally with the British to counter Franco-German efforts to steer Europe off a transatlantic course. The Netherlands’ solid European and international credentials create a powerful “multiplier” effect. In Iraq, Dutch forces provided the physical and political cover for Japan to deploy and the Dutch are using their NATO Training Mission commitment to push others to do more. In Afghanistan, the Dutch drove much of the Phase III planning for ISAF and deployed Dutch troops in combat operations for the first time in more than 30 years. The Dutch have led Europe in launching pilot projects to strengthen international counterterrorism cooperation, and initiated the U.S.-EU dialogue on terrorist financing which laid the groundwork for a proposed major international Terrorism Financing Conference in 2006.

If America is the police man of the world, Holland is its stoolie. Or perhaps “teacher’s pet” is a better description. Because our politicians always want to bring an apple for teacher, to show that they know their duty to support America’s wars…

Cablegate: Holland has nuclear weapons

Dutch politics, US Foreign Policy
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It’s been an open secret for years that there are still tactical nuclear weapons stationed in the Netherlands, probably at Volkel Air Base. Politically embarassing for both the Nehterlands and the US, their existence has never been confirmed or denied, though it is public knowledge that the Dutch airforce still has a nuclear strike task within NATO. One of those things everybody in the business knows, but the great unwashed can’t be allowed to know for sure. But thanks to Wikileaks, now we do. A cable from the American embassy in Berlin contained the following passage confirming the existence of tactical nuclear weapons in not just Holland, but also in Germany, Belgium and Turkey:

In response to Gordon’s question about how the government planned to take forward the commitment in the coalition agreement to seek the removal of all remaining nuclear weapons from Germany, Heusgen distanced the Chancellery from the proposal, claiming that this had been forced upon them by FM Westerwelle. Heusgen said that from his perspective, it made no sense to unilaterally withdraw “the 20” tactical nuclear weapons still in Germany while Russia maintains “thousands” of them. It would only be worth it if both sides drew down. Gordon noted that it was important to think through all the potential consequences of the German proposal before going forward. For example, a withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Germany and perhaps from Belgium and the Netherlands could make it very difficult politically for Turkey to maintain its own stockpile, even though it was still convinced of the need to do so.

On the one hand, this is not actually news, as everybody concerned knew this already. On the other hand, it’s now official out in the public domain and might therefore be embarassing for the governments involved. On the gripping hand, this also enables them to finally question their continued deployal openly. Why keep nuclear weapons meant to stop the Russian Tank Guard Armies crossing the Rhine when those armies have long gone and the Russians are almost incapable of keeping their recruits alive, let alone organise a new Cold War?

BBC Political Editors – Making It Up As They Go Along

Dutch politics, Gordon Brown, Manufacturing consent, Media, Tories, UK politics
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UPDATE: Brown is currently announcing he’s going to see the Queen to resign and to recommend that she ask the leader of the opposition, ie Cameron, to form a government. But still, my post makes some valid points, not least that Nick Robinson should be sacked.

It ain’t over till the Queen lady sings…

The BBC are now performing a complete volte face and promoting a Lib Dem/Conservative coalition to the skies.

This is because, according to their ‘sources’, namely Charles ‘safety elephant’ Clarke, greedy backbench philanderer David Blunkett, that walking piece of unpleasantry John Reid and Bambi-eyed Andy Burnham (who must’ve been inhaling too much of his Maybelline mascara), that any Lib/Lab pact is dead.

The politicoliterati are still trying to turn this negotiating period into a two party adversarial contest (I blame Nick Robinson) – but that’s not what forming a coalition is about.

Take the Dutch model:

In the UK a party’s manifesto is its manifesto for government. In the Netherlands manifestoes exist to be melted during post-election negotiations, and fused together.

The process takes time. To do it in a week would be completely impossible in Holland. It cannot be done in days – or rather it can, but then Dutch people would strongly suspect that the job had not been done properly, and that the deal had not been well thought-out.

It’s understandable that the British newspapers are eager for a resolution, but it’s not correct that the UK is without leadership.

There is a caretaker government. The chancellor of the exchequer can continue to take part in discussions of the global economic crisis. Day-to-day decisions will continue to be made.

It’s absolutely normal, from a Dutch perspective, for parties to drive a hard bargain to get as many of their policies as possible into the programme of the new coalition government.

Dutch coalitions usually last for years… though one in 2002 fell after 87 days.

What is less normal is to have a party, like the Liberal Democrats in this case, in a position of so much power that it can make the difference between stable government and chaos. That is because, in the Dutch political system, there are always several coalition possibilities.

There is also less likelihood of a party holding simultaneous negotiations with the two biggest parties – so less scope for allegations of double-crossing.

This whole mess is a ridiculous media-driven one and it’s been talked up by the likes of Nick Robinson in order to fit his own preferred preconceived narrative.

This isn’t democracy, it’s government by media and the rumour mill, and in no way does it reflect the will of the voters.

If this latest rumour turns out to be true, the LibDems will, unsurprisingly, implode in acrimony and worst of all we’ll have a Tory government. The only upside is there’ll be another election along soon when it all falls apart as it’s bound to.

The downside is it’ll again be run under FPTP, and once again the voters will be robbed.

Worst. Election. Ever.

Crisis? What Crisis?, Dutch politics, UK elections
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Change the names and number of parties and what Lenny says about the UK elections goes as well for the Dutch one a month later:

The 2010 general election will result in a victory for the nasty party, whoever wins. All three major parties, having supported the mammoth bank bailouts, stand for the deepest cuts in the public sector for over 50 years, far outstripping anything accomplished by Thatcher. Outdoing Thatcher in the cuts stakes is, in case the point passed you by, as nasty as can be. The chancellors’ debate – which, underscoring the poverty of alternatives, was won by the drab former Shell economist Vincent Cable – reinforced this quite starkly. There is only a difference of emphasis and timing between the parties, and these differences all sound eminently reasonable and plausible within the terms of the discussion – but they are largely technocratic differences with policy flavours attached.

All parties accept the reality that “we” need to drastically cut expenditure to pay for the bankers’ crisis. All parties accept we can’t really raise taxes on rich people high enough to do so, nor expect the banks to repay us, so it will be the workers who’ll have to pay, one way or another. All that’s left is quibbling about what to cut and how we are going to pay it.

You Can Polder If You Want To. You Just Have To Want To.

Dutch politics, Economy, Health, Oh Those Crazy Cloggies
Published on 1 Comment on You Can Polder If You Want To. You Just Have To Want To.

nederlandtulpen_1
Should America follow the Dutch social model? Ask that of any US pundit, the conventional reply will be “Nooo, the socialism, it burrns! 52% tax!”

But just maybe, maybe they should think the unthinkable, says American exiled in Amsterdam Russell Shorto, in a fascinating article in the NYT magazine. Americans pretty much pay an equal amount in cumulative taxes, to much less effect:

…in talking both with American expats and with experts in the Dutch system, I hear the same thing over and over: American perceptions of European-style social welfare are seriously skewed. The system in which I have embedded myself has its faults, some of them lampoonable. But does the cartoon image of it — encapsulated in the dread slur “socialism,” which is being lobbed in American political circles like a bomb — match reality? Is there, maybe, a significant upside that is worth exploring?

It’s a biggish read but worth it as a primer on how the country works:

I spent my initial months in Amsterdam under the impression that I was living in a quasi-socialistic system, built upon ideas that originated in the brains of Marx and Engels. This was one of the puzzling features of the Netherlands. It is and has long been a highly capitalistic country — the Dutch pioneered the multinational corporation and advanced the concept of shares of stock, and last year the country was the third-largest investor in U.S. businesses — and yet it has what I had been led to believe was a vast, socialistic welfare state. How can these polar-opposite value systems coexist?

[….]

…water also played a part in the development of the welfare system… The Dutch call their collectivist mentality and way of politics-by-consensus the “polder model,” after the areas of low land systematically reclaimed from the sea. “People think of the polder model as a romantic idea” and assume its origins are more myth than fact, Mak told me. “But if you look at records of the Middle Ages, you see it was a real thing. Everyone had to deal with water. With a polder, the big problem is pumping the water. But in most cases your land lies in the middle of the country, so where are you going to pump it? To someone else’s land. And then they have to do the same thing, and their neighbor does, too. So what you see in the records are these extraordinarily complicated deals. All of this had to be done together.”

[…]

IF “SOCIALISM” IS THEN something of a straw man — if rather than political ideology, religious values and a tradition of cooperation are what lie beneath the modern social-welfare system — maybe it’s worth asking a simple question of such a system: What does it feel like to live in it?

Sholto answers that question by interviewing a number of other US expats, which is a bit lazy of him though he does admit it:

Indeed, my nonscientific analysis — culled from my own experience and that of other expats whom I’ve badgered — translates into a clear endorsement. My friend Colin Campbell, an American writer, has been in the Netherlands for four years with his wife and their two children. “Over the course of four years, four human beings end up going to a lot of different doctors,” he said. “The amazing thing is that virtually every experience has been more pleasant than in the U.S. There you have the bureaucracy, the endless forms, the fear of malpractice suits. Here you just go in and see your doctor. It shows that it doesn’t have to be complicated. I wish every single U.S. congressman could come to Amsterdam and live here for a while and see what happens medically.”

It’s not quite as simple as that – it’s all in Dutch, for a start – but close. I’ve experienced the health and social care systems of the US, UK and NL personally and up close, and the Netherlands’ is the one I’d go for every time. Once you get past the impenetrable bureaucracy, (which Shotto doesn’t really mention, but it is a massive obstacle) and the language/cultural issues, it seems to work on the whole.

It’s certainly rare to see anyone truly, visibly poor here, unlike in the US and the UK, and to be sick or disabled here is not the automatic life-sentence to poverty and exclusion it is there. Sholto goes on to back this up with numbers:

A study by the Commonwealth Fund found that 54 percent of chronically ill patients in the United States avoided some form of medical attention in 2008 because of costs, while only 7 percent of chronically ill people in the Netherlands did so for financial reasons.

Read more….

Enough said. Case proven.