The PvdA (Labour party) is becoming embroiled in a leadership crisis, former aid minister and PvdA elder statesman Jan Pronk told VPRO radio on Tuesday. Now that party leader Wouter Bos is deputy prime minister and finance minister in the new cabinet, he can no longer come out for the party line, Pronk said.

The PvdA had become ‘second fiddle’ to the Christian Democrats and did not have a good story to tell people at the bottom of the heap. ‘Bos radiates not knowing the answers,’ Pronk said, warning that the Socialists would overtake the PvdA in popularity.