Notice the first comment below this Tweet: it’s by Theo Francken, “Please stop this government. It doesn’t make sense anymore.” The MR strategy reinforces the N-VA narrative.
Escalade MR-VLD
We can speak of an escalation between MR and VLD. This sequence clearly reveals the problem posed by Georges Louis Bouchez to the government. His strategy is that of the pigeon on the chessboard: “No matter how good the chess player is, the pigeon will just knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and proudly strut around like it’s won.“
His government partners are in a game of chess, with its rules and the president of the MR behaves like the pigeon who knocks down the pawns, shits on the chessboard and stands ready to overthrow it. The question facing chess players is simple, is it worth playing with a pigeon that knocks everything over?
The Pigeon strategy can be suffered (the pigeon does not know how to play chess) or chosen (we choose to play pigeon, to impose its own rules). The president of the MR believes to be in the second category. He considers that codes are made to be broken, that conventions are made for the weak. His political idols like Nicolas Sarkozy or Emmanuel Macron have indeed imposed themselves by walking on the chessboard of the governments of which they were a part.
Georges Louis Bouchez does not want a new Vivaldi, he dreams of something else, probably a new Swede, with him as Prime Minister. For him Alexander de Croo first is an error of history.
The Loneliness of the Pigeon
Unlike chess, reversing the chessboard is indeed an option in politics. This strategy of the pigeon might perhaps pay off in the elections. The bottom of the air is indeed mistrust, many voters no longer want the rules of the Belgian political game with its complicated compromises, they want to overturn the table.
But whereas in France once elected the president is alone in front of the chessboard, in Belgium the pigeon must continue to play with the others. While waiting for a possible victory, since the system obliges you to play the game with several people, having a pigeon in your team of chess players is particularly difficult to live with. Especially for the Prime Minister who has to make sure his team plays as well as possible.
This is why the VLD sends a message to the MR: the VLD feels its hands are free. Free enough to poach Alexia Bertrand, free enough also to possibly, if possible, dispense with the MR in a future government.
Nothing indicates that this will be possible tomorrow. The VLD is currently in difficulty in the polls, unlike the MR which is behaving better. But it’s the signal for the weekend: we already knew that the other French-speaking parties and Groen and Vooruit are disgusted. They will do without MR in 2024 if they can. We now know that the VLD might too. As for the CD&V, it might join the ranks of the disgusted with the pigeon in the face of liberal resistance around the tax reform that the Christian Democrats are promoting.
But since it’s possible that all of those will be forced to continue together until 2024 and maybe even beyond, the pigeon can continue to shit on the chessboard. Federal politics is therefore likely to look like a chessboard filled with droppings for a long time to come.
