The Liberate The Utrecht Fish Edition - Week 10 - 2026

·1 hr 21 min·5 clips

The unions walked out after 45 minutes and announced strikes over the pension overhaul.

NSC gets corrected before kickoff. The opener turns a political acronym into sports banter, then Gordon Darroch brings in Paul Beters on a Thursday, a day earlier than usual. The main treat is Tom Lauwersen, though the hosts first dodge the phrase polling guru and land on something even dafter. Polls do the heavy lifting. Lauwersen pulls available polling into a weighted picture, with a dry poke at pollsters who still will not share their data. That gap turns into a joke about whoever broke into Odido, because even polling has petty mysteries. Then Brussels takes over. The European section explains why leaders there were watching the Dutch government after the de Schoof cabinet's euro-critical coalition. The Netherlands had a reputation: difficult in Brussels, sometimes obstructive, and now keen to sound different. The message is constructive. The cabinet wants to stop hanging around the European sidelines and play a connecting role inside the EU again. One Dutch phrase gets translated, then the image starts to wobble. Paul and Gordon push it into jokes about Greece, oil, and bad metaphors before returning to Dutch statecraft. Mark Rutte's shadow is there too. The Netherlands still likes picturing itself as the bridge between France and Germany, especially when it remembers its founding EU member status.

As heard by us

Polling, elections, and Europe, handled with dry confidence and a lightly crooked grin.

This Dutch News Podcast episode tracks the Netherlands' political mood through elections, EU positioning, and a long conversation about polling with Tom Lauwersen, the man behind the peiling visor.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A weekly catch-up on Dutch politics, with a polling deep dive and a look at how the Netherlands says it wants to show up in Europe.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from DutchNews Podcast