He danced on the table, but he could not become prime minister. He was a pioneer, but he also suffered defeats and threats. After six years, Sigrid Kaag’s political adventure in the Netherlands is over. It was announced yesterday that he returned to his old love, international diplomacy.
In 2017, D66 brought 55-year-old Kaag to the Netherlands for a ministerial post. He had no political experience but served as a diplomat at the United Nations for many years, mostly in the Middle East. Kaag had a leading role as head of the UN mission to destroy chemical weapons in Syria.
Ahead of his tenure as minister, Kaag told Vogue that he wanted to “work in and for the Netherlands.” “I still believe very much in the Netherlands. “I enjoy being here.” Now, after a tumultuous few years, things look different.
Firstly
Kaag started his political career parallel to his previous career; He became the Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation. A few months later – due to the forced resignation of VVD member Halbe Zijlstra – he briefly became Minister of Foreign Affairs under Rutte III. She is the first woman to hold this position in the Netherlands.
He was forced to quickly hand over the most important position in the ministry to Stef Blok, but he regained this post a few years later when the cabinet was already dismissed. However, he could not complete the journey. The chaotic evacuation from Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, turned deadly. Following a motion of no confidence in the parliamentary debate on this issue, Kaag drew his conclusion and resigned.
It was quite a blow on a personal level. “Foreign affairs was my passion, my heart, and who I was,” he said at the time. But resignation was also inevitable, especially since Kaag had recently entered the election campaign “with a new leadership”.
The election campaign in question was about the 2021 House of Representatives elections. Previously, Kaag was elected as the party chairman without facing serious opposition, and D66 became the second party in the elections. The 24 seats matched the party’s record set in 1994. It wasn’t enough for him to become prime minister as he had hoped, but it was reason enough to have a seat at the table.
Although Kaag had resigned from the ministry, he continued to lead the second party and was in the process of being formed. This was a difficult formation in which Kaag failed to weaken VVD leader Rutte politically from the very beginning. “This is where we part ways,” he told her in the infamous debate about Pieter Omtzigt’s “role elsewhere” on April 1. But he did not fire the shot and his party voted against the no-confidence motion, leaving Rutte in the middle.
Later in the formation it became clear that Kaag was unable to deliver on the promised new leadership: he succumbed to the VVD and CDA blockade of his desired coalition with PvdA and GroenLinks, whereupon the existing coalition made a fresh start under Kaag’s rule. Rutte’s leadership. At least after the longest training in Dutch history.
This was certainly not the outcome Kaag desired; he once described the Christian Union as a “rusty car”. In terms of content, D66 managed to score points in the coalition agreement, including on climate and education issues that are important to the party.
Under Rutte IV, Kaag became finance minister. It is also a first as she is the first woman to hold this position in the Netherlands. But the cabinet was not a happy marriage. “It took so long, it was so hard, and we were almost exhausted and exhausted before we actually started working on the cabinet,” Kaag said recently as he looked to the future.
More unsafe than a war zone
The cabinet collapsed prematurely last summer. It soon became clear that Sigrid Kaag, along with Rutte IV, would disappear from the Hague stage. He didn’t want to be D66’s party leader again. The main reason for this was “My job puts a strain on my family,” she said.
A few months ago, Kaag’s adult daughters appeared on a television show asking their mother to do something different. “It only has to go wrong once,” one of them said, recalling the murder of former D66 leader Els Borst.
Kaag has been under tight security for years and has had to deal with a constant barrage of insults, intimidation and threats against him. One of the worst points was when a man appeared at the door of his home address with a flashlight in his hand. “I felt more unsafe than when I lived in war zones,” Kaag said.
In various interviews he criticized the harshness in the Netherlands, including in the arena in The Hague. “When I came back, I never expected that demonization and dehumanization would be the order of the day in politics.” Kaag was called a “witch” by PVV leader Geert Wilders, and FvD leader Thierry Baudet linked her to espionage in a discussion link (after which the entire cabinet left the room).
It has been clear for some time that Kaag was done with Dutch politics. A few months ago he ran for EU commissioner, a post that eventually went to CDA member Wopke Hoekstra, and yet he appeared to want to return abroad. “I’m looking forward to a different form of freedom, I’m looking forward to fulfilling other roles,” Kaag said a few weeks ago.
He wrote yesterday that this would happen “faster than expected” because an envoy position for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip is available. With Sigrid Kaag’s return to the United Nations, her political career in the Netherlands ended, at least for the time being.
Source: NOS
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
