Pieter Omtzigt: the radical centrist who could become Dutch prime minister

Henny Dykmann is about to change the habit of a lifetime. Long a supporter of Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s VVD party, the 84-year-old retired nurse is instead planning to back an upstart in this month’s general elections.

“I’m voting for Pieter Omtzigt. So is everyone in my parish church. He’s honest,” she said.

Millions of Dutch citizens, angered by a series of government scandals, plan to join her. They have propelled Omtzigt and his three-month-old New Social Contract (NSC) party to the top of opinion polls, potentially paving the way for him to become prime minister.

Dykmann lives in Omtzigt’s hometown of Enschede, a working-class municipality still recovering from the decimation of its textile industry in the 1970s and located near the German border, far from the power centres of The Hague and Amsterdam. But the devout Catholic’s gospel of reform is resonating across the country.

After 13 years of coalitions headed by Rutte, people crave something different, said Tom Louwerse, politics professor at Leiden University.

“There is a big group that is dissatisfied with politics but still wants to engage because they want to change things,” he said.

Omtzigt set up+SC in August, ahead of the November 22 elections; the party is narrowly ahead in polls. An economist who has studied in the UK, Rome and Florence, he puts his rise down to offering “what people want”.

Although a former MP for the centre-right Christian Democratic Appeal, Omtzigt espouses leftist views on economics, advocating higher taxes on the rich, stronger workers’ rights and an increased minimum wage. He remains a supporter of rightwing policies on “migration and values”, he said in an interview with the Financial Times.

“I’ve seen the gap in the Netherlands in which some leftwing parties . . . seem to have got on to a progressive agenda while forgetting the working class,” he said.

“Outside the big cities, this is what ‘Middle Netherlands’ is like: can we have some social protection? Can you take care of us so we can have housing and our children can study without having huge debts?”

Omtzigt left the CDA in 2021 after helping expose a welfare scandal that brought down the government of which the Christian Democrats were part. Tax authorities had wrongly denied child benefit payments to more than 20,000 families, falsely accusing them of fraud and disproportionately targeting those from ethnic minorities. Rutte resigned over the affair but returned as prime minister in another coalition with the CDA.

NSC candidates include a former government official whose warnings over the welfare scandal were ignored, ex-MPs who have defected from other parties and political newcomers.

Frustration at bad governance has often driven voters in Europe and elsewhere to the political extremes. The Netherlands has its own recent history of far-right politics and division, including the rise about two decades ago of anti-immigrant populist Pim Fortuyn, who was assassinated in 2002 by a leftwing activist. Far-right parties have regularly sprung up since, with Geert Wilders’ Freedom party briefly entering government.

But Omtzigt could break the mould, with protest votes this time bolstering the middle ground, according to Louwerse. “The NSC is located more towards the political centre,” he said. “It shows the opposition does not necessarily have to come from the radical right.”

The Netherlands is facing a big gap in the political landscape as Rutte steps down. Apart from Omtzigt, those vying to fill it include his successor as VVD leader Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius and Frans Timmermans, the former European Commission vice-president heading a combined Labour-Green list.

The NSC is polling at 18.3 per cent, closely followed by the VVD on 17.5 per cent and Timmermans’ alliance on 15.8 per cent. The Freedom party is in fourth place at 12 per cent.

You are seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is most likely due to being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser.

Omtzigt has said he could collaborate with the VVD and the Labour-Green alliance in government, and neither has ruled out doing so. But a coalition would require compromise and could disappoint his voters, said Louwerse.

“There’s never been a complete change in government in the Netherlands. At least one party [from the previous administration] has remained,” he said. “So there’s a large degree of continuity. If people see . . . it’s very hard to change things, his popularity might fall.”

The NSC has an ambitious agenda. Omtzigt wants to reform the state, including introducing a constitutional court to oversee politicians and voting based on constituencies rather than nationally.

MPs accountable to local voters would have acted earlier in Groningen, a gas-rich province where extraction was stopped only this year, despite earthquakes wrecking homes and other buildings for decades, he said. A parliamentary inquiry found the government had prioritised money over safety, and it is paying billions in compensation.

Omtzigt said he would also tackle the cost of living crisis with state support and a higher minimum wage, build tens of thousands of homes and try to limit net immigration from 220,000 to 50,000 a year to reduce pressure on housing.

He advocates stricter enforcement of labour laws, curbing short-term contracts and tax breaks aimed at attracting foreign workers, and wants businesses to provide housing for their workers and play a bigger role in training.

In Enschede, Omtzigt’s refusal to accept political donations of more than €850 and his insistence on living in the town has won him local support, with his image stencilled on walls and street furniture in the area.

Edwin Plokker, curator at the local textile museum, said the town had historically voted for the Labour party but that many had turned to the far right.

“It’s the ‘end of the line’ city,” he said, referring to its position on the German border. “Some of the poorest neighbourhoods in the Netherlands are in Enschede.”

Plokker said he would vote for Labour as he found Omtzigt’s views on migration and abortion too conservative, but he added that he understood his appeal. “People feel politicians are not working for us,” he said. “Omtzigt is working for us and has shown it.”