Photo: Leonard Walpot/CDA
Ahead of the March general election, DutchNews.nl is interviewing a number of prominent MPs about their party’s policies. Today, Gordon Darroch talks to CDA MP Martijn van Helvert.
Compromise is the essence of politics and Martijn van Helvert believes it’s time to make it fashionable again. After a decade in which the strident populist right has tended to set the tone, both domestically and internationally, the Christian Democrats’ foreign affairs and defence spokesman says the fulcrum has shifted back towards the centre.
Having tacked to the nationalist right under its former leader, Sybrand Buma, focusing on mass migration and the fears of ‘concerned citizens’, the CDA is looking to reassert itself as the party of moderate conservatism.