ANPSP leader Lilian Marijnissen’s Political Struggles and Vision for the Future

ANPSP leader Lilian Marijnissen

SP leader Lilian Marijnissen receives full support from her supporters, but she seems to reach the people outside less with her message. Her political ideas do not get off the ground, young people do not feel connected to the party and political successes do not seem to stick with the voter. How does Marijnissen plan to turn the tide in these elections?

From an Ipsos survey commissioned by News hour it appears that 70 percent of the SP supporters think Lilian Marijnissen is the best leader of the SP. 26 percent answered this question neutrally. In other words: the vast majority of her party does not consider her unsuitable as party leader.

Yet Marijnissen has since taking office suffered only electoral losses at the end of 2017, at national, regional and European level. And she is also losing seats in the most recent polls. The SP now has nine seats in the House of Representatives, but is polled at five. The SP is a relatively popular party among older people – 14 percent of people over 60 vote for the party – but younger voters ignore the party. Only 4 percent of voters under 45 vote SP.

Yet Marijnissen does not rule out co-governance, she says News hour. She envisions ministerial posts for SP members Agnes Kant and Renske Leijten, but also thinks that the post of Social Affairs and Public Health “would suit her”. “The idea that you, as a political leader, will remain in the House of Representatives is actually my starting point, but you never know how things will go in the formation. There is plenty to do.”

Big ideas, no political majority

The SP has traditionally been known as the party that literally stands among the people in the neighborhoods and the factories. The party does not seem to have yet found a new form of successful campaigning. A protest against supermarket profits, a petition to nationalize energy companies and a petition to close down all health insurers: this is a selection of the SP’s actions in recent years. But there is no political majority nationally for any of these plans.

Marijnissen says that steps have indeed been taken in various provinces to deprivatize the energy sector. For example in Limburg: “In the provincial government, in which the SP sits, the coalition agreement states that the design of a provincial energy company must be looked at.”

In recent years there has been a right-wing politics that, despite the nice words, is still not making the move towards reducing market forces in healthcare.

Lilian Marijnissen

Major reforms in health care in particular have been a hobbyhorse for the SP for years. The party wants to remove all commerce from healthcare and set up a National Healthcare Fund. Since 2016, 250,000 signatures have been collected for that plan. In the House, the SP always seems to be running into a wall of unfeasibility.

“The special thing is: there is a majority in the country,” says Marijnissen. “But in recent years there has been right-wing politics that, despite the nice words, is still not making the move towards reducing market forces in healthcare.”

But experts are also not entirely enthusiastic about a National Healthcare Fund. “In itself, it is very sympathetic to transfer healthcare tasks to the government,” says Xander Koolman, health economist at the Vrije Universiteit. “But a system change is extremely expensive. This could easily cost 100 billion euros.”

Marijnissen questions this amount and mentions the billions in funds that have been set up for climate and nitrogen. “We would rather use that money to get rid of the power of health insurers in the future, to put control back where it belongs and to prevent health care costs from exploding.”

Pre-vocational secondary education German teacher Erik Slotboom always votes SP, but is now in doubt. He praises the work that the SP, especially former MP Renske Leijten, has done in the revelations surrounding the benefits affair. He wonders why this did not stick to the SP, but to Pieter Omtzigt.

‘What are you going to do to turn the tide?’

Former SP MP Renske Leijten was, alongside Pieter Omtzigt, the political face of the benefits affair, but after the cabinet fell in 2022 over this scandal, it did not yield any election gains for the SP. The party lost five seats.

Marijnissen attributes this to modesty in her party. “We need to make that clearer. People think: if I vote for the SP, will they go for it, or will it be the opposition again? We have shown that we have absolute added value from the opposition, but that too We still have something to gain.”

We also spoke with Marijnissen about the SP’s sore points at a local level and about involving rich left-wing people in the party. Watch the entire conversation here:

In conversation with SP party leader Lilian Marijnissen

2023-11-09 22:20:29
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