--- description: The Party's Over title: The Party's Over image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [World](/section/world/) # The Party's Over (20 Oct 2002) by [James Graff](/author/james-graff/) Oct 20, 2002 4:00 AM CUT by [James Graff](/author/james-graff/) Oct 20, 2002 4:00 AM CUT During last week’s regal state funeral of Prince Claus, Queen Beatrix’s consort, the Netherlands looked like its old self, a place of traditional reserve and shared national feeling. When the ceremony was over, though, the country reverted to its more recent norms of chaos and calumny. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende informed the Queen that the government he put together 87 days ago had reached a dead end. The reason: a bitter leadership feud between Economics Minister Herman Heinsbroek and Health Minister Eduard Bomhoff, both members of List Pim Fortuyn (LPF). When Balkenende, a Christian Democrat, failed to reconcile them, it was obvious that this cabinet was not going to survive. “The LPF is brilliant at carrying wood to its own funeral pyre,” says the hapless Mat Herben, a former party leader who now takes up the post again. “Sometimes it even provides the matches.” The government’s burnout hardly came as a surprise, since from its inception it had been consumed by bickering within the LPF, its second-biggest member. With a populist program grounded largely in public fascination for Fortuyn, its founder, who was murdered just nine days before elections last May, the LPF’s survival was always dicey. The end came with the unseemly ministerial spat in which Heinsbroek, a flamboyant recording-industry executive who affects a chauffeured Bentley just as Fortuyn did, called Bomhoff a “moron.” Bomhoff, a brittle former professor of economics, countered by calling Heinsbroek a “lunatic.” They both resigned, bringing down the coalition with them. Balkenende will lead a minority government with the liberal VVD until new elections are held, most likely in January, but the work agenda over the next couple of weeks alone would challenge even the most solid government. It begins this week with a key summit of European leaders in Brussels, where a top item on the agenda is the financing of the European Union’s enlargement. The Netherlands has been the most aggressive of the so-called Gang of Four, pressing alongside Germany, Sweden and the U.K. for radical reform of subsidies in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). After the Germans and the British, the Dutch are the largest net contributors to the program. The government wants to make enlargement conditional on reform of cap, an idea that is anathema to France, the biggest beneficiary of the Union’s agricultural subsidies. “It’s out of the question to change the cap while citing new entrants as the excuse,” French European Affairs Minister Noëlle Lenoir told TIME. “We’ve agreed to them gradually entering this system and obtaining the same funding over time as the rest of us.” Most observers think a weakened Dutch government will be less willing and able to take a strongly anti-enlargement position in Brussels. “You’ve got to wonder whether a caretaker government could hold up a process widely thought to be crucial to the Union’s future,” says one E.U. diplomat. “But frankly, nobody now knows what the Dutch are going to do.” Indeed, the uncertainty in the Hague, which came just days before the Irish referendum on the Nice Treaty, is another reminder of how easily the timetable for enlargement can be wrecked by domestic politics. Even if the current member states agree in Brussels on a common position for financing enlargement, they still have to work out details with the candidate countries before the crucial December summit in Copenhagen. Though out of government, the LPF could still be a spoiler. Angry at their ejection, party leaders threw sand in the gears of parliament last week by declaring the entire state budget open for debate. That dissonant note may end up as the party’s swan song, though. A recent poll found that if elections were held now, the LPF would retain only four of the 26 places it won in the 150-seat lower house of parliament. But the party’s exit from government leaves undelivered the promise for real change that Pim Fortuyn offered in the first place. “We elected the LPF to do a job that the other politicians wouldn’t do,” says Nico de Bruin, 56, who owns a cheese shop in Amstelveen. He is not alone in wondering whether those now thwarted hopes will flicker again in a new Dutch government. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6893490/the-partys-over-3/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6893490/the-partys-over-3/"},"headline":"The Party's Over (20 Oct 2002)","datePublished":"2002-10-20T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-23T16:51:59.663Z","description":"The Party's Over","url":"https://time.com/archive/6893490/the-partys-over-3/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"James Graff","url":"https://time.com/author/james-graff/"}],"articleSection":"World","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/world/","name":"World"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6893490/the-partys-over-3/","name":"The Party's Over (20 Oct 2002)"}}]}] ```