The Christian Democrats and the PvdA Labour party seem to realise that, in order to solve the present economic problems, they will probably need each other quite a lot after the elections. ‘I like their insight’, writes Wouter Bos. ‘Particularly when the extent of the crisis is still being underestimated’.

One of the most interesting political developments of the last few weeks is the meeting of minds between Labour and CDA, or at least between party leaders Van Haersma Buma and Samsom.

It started with an interview in the NRC in which Buma stated that, based on a ‘new pragmatic approach’, a cooperation with Labour could very well be on the cards. ‘The centre parties should be more assertive and make clear the flanks have nothing to offer, that polarisation doesn’t work. That’s what I’m trying to do.’ The important thing, according to Buma, is that both parties are ‘prepared to get the difficult pro-Europe message across.’

Three days later Samsom followed this up in an interview with Trouw: ‘The CDA and the PvdA are the only parties whose ambition it is to keep our society together. Both parties are people’s parties based on emancipation.’

Remarkable

Although these quotes testify to a number of interesting differences between the arguments and motives of the two men, the narrowing gap between the parties is remarkable for a number of reasons.

First of all, it is not very consistent with the way both men have been portrayed in the media. Buma is predominantly seen as the CDA’s right flank candidate and Samsom as the candidate of his party’s left. Perhaps we should have known better. Buma was also the only candidate who ruled out a possible cooperation with the PVV. And Samsom was one of the few in the upper regions of his party to consider a centre party cabinet with CDA and VVD during the cabinet formation talks of 2010 which ended in failure for Labour.

But the most important thing to take away from this rapprochement lies in the apparent conviction of both men that they are likely to need each other after the elections and that, in the light of the current problems, the differences between the two parties are almost negligible.

I like their insight. I like it in particular because I’m afraid the extent of the crisis is still being underestimated.

Unsolved

The current crisis started out as a banking crisis. This crisis still hasn’t been solved. Then it turned into an economic crisis which is a repetitive crisis, with little growth, double dips and even triple dips. Then we went on to a debt crisis which will take years to solve and finally, we were landed with the euro crisis. When and how that one is going to be solved is anyone’s guess. The picture we have of one crisis turning into the next is airbrushed to the hilt. In reality, new crises are piling up on top of old, unsolved ones.

But my main worry has to be the political crisis. As many as eleven European government leaders have lost their mandate so far. The reason this worries me is that we are only at the beginning of the bad news politicians will have to give the people, and therefore perhaps also at the beginning of a wave of mistrust of compromising, administratively orientated politicians and a possible wave of trust in the populist flank parties: you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Let’s look at what happened after the June elections of 2010. Rutte formed his cabinet in October, too late for budget day. The 2011 budget therefore lacked new policies and contained hardly anything bearing on Rutte’s €18bn cutback. That blow only began to make itself felt on budget day 2011, to become really noticeable from January 2012.

Unite

Four months later the cabinet fell. In other words: when the cabinet collapsed we had only been through four months of austerity misery. We haven’t begun to feel the impact of the bulk of the €18bn package, let alone the €12bn that followed it. The €20bn that parties are proposing in their election manifestos is an incomprehensible paper reality to most people. In short, we have only experienced about a tenth of what is yet to come. And already discontent and mistrust are on the rise.

In a situation like this politicians are left with only one option: unite all reasonable forces. The next cabinet needs to be as broad-based as possible.

Wouter Bos is a partner at professional services firm KPMG where he is responsible for healthcare. He was the political leader of the PvdA and finance minister and deputy prime minister under Jan Peter Balkenende from 2007 to 2010.

This article was published earlier in The Volkskrant