And that can rightly be called a historic moment, as he himself acknowledges. “Now cooperation will really start,” says the former party leader. ‘Mei-Li Vos (president of the PvdA party, ed) and I have been working closely in the Senate for three and a half years now, but now it also goes hand in hand with the elections. And the fact that there will be only one faction is truly historic.”
Rosenmöller therefore thinks that the merger in the Senate will be a stepping stone towards a possible merger in the House of Representatives. “Then this has to be a success first,” he adds. ‘So all the people who will soon sit in the large – in our opinion the largest – parliamentary group of the Senate, will also be responsible for carrying out the will of members of both parties. We will try it in the Senate and everyone is confident. (…). It is an unstoppable movement and we will take every step with our members. Ultimately they determine what the future of the collaboration will look like.’
Too late?
While Rosenmöller doesn’t think the formation of a social democratic bloc – which actually functions as a bloc – is too late, he thinks it should have been sooner. “But otherwise I never look back that much,” he continues. “It’s nice to learn from history, but I also think it will come with time.”
He speaks of a “liberal wind” that has been blowing in the Netherlands for some time and that the progressive left is “what is on the defensive”. “We want to get there,” says Rosenmöller. ‘We see incredible fragmentation in the political landscape and we want to counterbalance that. It should not continue fragmentation, but rather cooperation. And with this step – which is already unprecedented – we can truly become the largest group in the Senate.’
“The Power of Numbers”
While he doesn’t like to look back on the past, he hopes for the prospect of big numbers. “In my union days I learned about the power of numbers,” he continues. That power is real. And that means you also have a lot more influence, and in this case in the Senate. Perhaps this is also the right time after so many years of domination by right-wing liberal politics, where left-wing progressives are still awaiting the left’s initiative.’
Rosenmöller also clarifies that cooperation will also be implemented in all sectors. “At that moment party differences disappear completely. We have been a collective since the elections,’ he concludes. ‘We now have six PvdA members and eight GroenLinks members in the Senate. With those ratios we would then have a fraction of fourteen men, and then you would also divide all the work among fourteen men. Legislative proposals, positions, initiatives, all with a single political group’.
He sees a bright future for the new alliance. “The elections must end well. And if you look at polls and polls, but especially the wishes of people on the progressive left, they crave that cooperation. It gives them a prospect of becoming perhaps the largest faction in the Senate.’