Mark Rutte: I should have left earlier, came at the expense of own party

Outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte thinks in hindsight that he should have left earlier, he said on Saturday on the radio program Spuigasten. In doing so, he agreed with new VVD party leader Dilan Yesilgöz. She said in an interview in Saturday's edition of the Algemeen Dagblad that Rutte had stayed in office too long and that the party had lost its VVD profile as a result.

"When you've done this for a long time, your effectiveness decreases," Rutte said on the radio program. One of the consequences, he said, is that "you also have to make more compromises to eventually form a new Cabinet.”

Despite the criticism, Yesilgöz thought Rutte was a good prime minister. "Mark guided us through the financial crisis and the coronavirus crisis," she told AD.

However, the outgoing prime minister admitted that scandals like the benefits affair and the earthquake damage in Groningen are attached to his years as prime minister. "Logically," he said. But that did force compromises with other parties, AD reported. And if I'm completely honest, of course, that also came at the expense of my own club’s profile, " referring to the VVD.

That won't happen again with his successor, Yesilgöz, Rutte said. "She really is cut from a different cloth. She won't go as far as I did."

Rutte's fourth Cabinet fell over migration before the summer. His declining effectiveness and his long leadership also played a role in this, Rutte said. The agreements on migration were "too vague. When it came down to it, we were not able to get out of it." That, the outgoing prime minister said, was neither good for the party nor good for the country.

"It's a grueling job," the VVD leader says of being prime minister. "You have to be on your feet all day, sharp-witted." With jetlags and many late-night meetings, that's not easy, he said. The outside world knows Rutte as tireless, looking fresh even after short nights.

On July 10, Rutte announced his retirement from politics at the start of the debate on dissolving the Cabinet. Rutte has been prime minister of the Netherlands for nearly 13 years and political leader of the VVD for 17 years. He will remain in office as outgoing prime minister until a new Cabinet is formed.