Van Baalen to Brits: "It's all about the heart" - Main contents
The new Liberal ALDE party president Hans van Baalen ran his party’s campaign to get the Dutch to support the draft EU constitution in 2005. “In the end it was all about the heart. Statistics don’t work. In Britain it will be the same. It has to be a campaign of the heart, that changes the sentiment.” The In campaign can’t get caught up in the renegotiation process, he says, because “The Out people just go straight to the heart and are always miles ahead.”
More on Hans van Baalen, NEW LIBERAL PARTY PRESIDENT: The newly elected president of the ALDE party tells me he plans to be a “British-style party chair,” and his goal is to cement ALDE as the truly EU-wide third force in European politics, after the party slipped back in the 2014 European elections.
Some of van Baalen’s tactics will include: getting organized (telephone marathons before summits, making Liberal ministers actually meet each other as “no-one really knows each other apart from names”) and bringing new parties into the fold in Spain and Poland (Alberto Rivera of Ciudadanos is invited to the next pre-summit meeting of national leaders). He also says the territorial tactics won’t be welcome — he wants to leave space for Guy Verhofstadt as parliamentary leader, and also demand his seven vice presidents actually contribute something to hauling the Liberals back into the center of European debate.