Agnes Joseph, the actuary turned member of parliament (MP) who joined parliament in 2024 as a member of the fraction of political upstart New Social Contract (NSC), has left the party and joined the smaller Farmers Party (BBB), one of NSC’s coalition partners.
Joseph announced her move on Thursday on BBB’s website. She joined parliament in 2023 after her party NSC won 20 seats in the parliamentary elections.
Her motivation to enter politics was to “improve” the new Dutch pension law by introducing member ballots on the conversion of defined benefit (DB) accruals to defined contribution (DC) capitals.
However, she failed in that mission after her amendment that was to arrange this was narrowly defeated in a vote in May.
The fact that minister of social affairs Eddy van Hijum, also a member of NSC, refused to back Joseph’s amendment at the time contributed to her decision to leave the party, she admitted in an interview with daily De Telegraaf. “I felt insufficient support at NSC,” she told the paper.
After Van Hijum was elected as NSC’s new leader in June following the fall of the Dutch government, Joseph had already announced she would not stand again for parliament for NSC at the next elections scheduled for 29 October.
“Logical” move
Joseph has taken her parliamentary seat with her to BBB, bringing the party’s tally in parliament to eight. In a statement on the BBB website, Joseph said it is “logical” for her to join BBB because the party has always supported her in her efforts to change the pension law.
Joseph tabled her rejected amendment together with BBB MP Henk Vermeer.
“Together with me, BBB and Henk Vermeer have fought for improvements [to the pension law] from day one,” said Joseph.
After announcing she would stand again for NSC, Joseph had already been stripped of her spokesperson role for pensions. This contributed to her decision to join BBB, she said.
“I don’t want to take part half-heartedly in the crucial pension debates that will be conducted in parliament in September,” Joseph said.
Whether she will remain in parliament after the October elections remains to be seen. BBB currently polls around four seats, which is considerably more than Joseph’s old party, NSC, which only has one seat in most polls.
Still, Joseph is only ranked eighth on BBB’s provisional electoral list. This means the former actuary will most likely only make it into parliament if she gets enough preferential votes.
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