Former Christian Democrat party chairman and cabinet minister Bert de Vries has confirmed he has resigned his party membership. Speaking on public radio, he said he decided to leave the party because of its “move to the right”.
Bert de Vries was one of the prominent Christian Democrats who spoke out against the minority coalition with the conservative VVD and its reliance on parliamentary support from Geert Wilders’ anti-Islamic Freedom Party.
He was quoted at the time as saying: “It was an extremely nasty surprise to discover that my party finds it acceptable to work with a party that does not recognize one of the world’s major faiths as a religion.”