Column | Do you think about politics or korfball in red green?

To achieve something in politics, it is useful to come up with a good party name. Hence my question last week to the readers to think of such a name for the new party that GroenLinks and the PvdA will probably set up together.

The necessary readers did their utmost, the parties themselves did not hear anything, so that we must take into account the possibility that the establishment will be canceled at the eleventh hour due to a lack of good name. Jesse Klaver then: « We thought of just green left/pvda. » Frans Timmermans: « Totally agreed, but in reverse order. »

It is certain that it will be difficult, because my creative readers also had great difficulty producing the golden find. The difficulty is that you have to think of something original based on sleeets. Solidarity, social, sustainable, agreement, alliance, covenant: there is almost impossible to escape such stop laps. Most are already in use with other parties.

It was therefore not surprising that quite a few readers came with ‘new links’. An excellent name, but used before: it was the name of a renewal movement in the PvdA in the sixties. Leader André van der Louw would rise from his grave, unless he is cremated, if a new generation with that name won.

I sum up a number of other suggestions from readers: sustainable left, strong middle, just left, large left, grood, left connecting, left front, left, the coalition party, red (acronym for just and sustainable), green social democrats (GSD), psg25 (progressive social green, not social party? PGL (Labor and GroenLinks Party).

I count to the jokes: the party without feathers and the Robin Hood party (« Insenter: » The Netherlands has to go to higher taxes for the top « ). There was also a reader who suggested the party for the people, because yes, why should only a party for the animals be allowed?

Some readers responded positively to the name Roodgroen, which is often mentioned within the two parties and which also seems suitable for me. But there were also objections, such as some readers who previously thought of a korfball club by this name or at the former club colors of the ADO football club in The Hague (‘everything through practice’).

In the 1980s, the politician Wim de Boer was involved before the PPR in the negotiations of PPR with PSP and CPN about a merger that would lead to the new party GroenLinks (with the EVP there) in 1990. He reminded me that it was difficult for him to convince the negotiators of PSP and CPN in 1989 to accept the name GroenLinks. De Boer suspects that the current party boards of PvdA and GroenLinks are not over yet.

This brings me to the best suggestion I received from a reader, Jan Geerts. He came up with ‘social heart’. It is not a new concept, occasionally it is linked to social activities, and in local politics the word ‘heart’ sometimes appears, but I have not yet encountered it in national politics. It is short, powerful and contains the core of the political message from PvdA and GroenLinks. So what she’s paying attention.

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