Dear Mrs. Marijnissen, hello Lilian

Madam feels very strange in your case (I’m just using the informal ‘you’, is that okay with you?), because you are darn thirteen years younger than I am and if anyone deserves the stamp of ‘approachable and accessible’, it’s you. You didn’t receive the Clear Language Award for nothing for being the clearest speaking member of parliament. It’s almost impossible not to, with a father who calmly told the then Speaker of the House, Frans Weisglas, to 'just tone it down a bit'. Unlike, for example, Jesse Klaver and Geert Wilders, you are not about rehearsed speeches and role-playing. However, you do come up with a striking one-liner (in the shower? While walking?) and you use it strategically. And you’re right. Politics and the press thrive on striking sentences. If possible, keep it short.

You are the youngest party leader (and how wonderful that there are so many female party leaders, we are highlighting one each day this week every day one), but probably the longest active in years. I think your father read party programs to you instead of Jip and Janneke. And instead of going to the playground, you were photographed for the campaign image of the SP. Although I think your father surely took you to the playground on the way back. Or to the football stadium, also a great love of yours. I believe that is one of the first things you long for when everything is ‘normal’ again. Sitting in the stands at Feyenoord and not worrying about those exorbitant salaries of footballers. Because you think that’s a lot of nonsense (just like the hundreds of thousands that doctors get in the hospital), you don’t even need to come up with a one-liner for that, we really know that.

That you went into politics is just as logical as the son of Richard Krajicek going to play tennis. Your father, your mother (a municipal councilor for the SP in Oss), a degree in political science; you were prepared for this calling in a straight line. How incredibly proud we will be of you. I then imagine that the night before the elections you sit down at the table with your parents and while you’re having a bite to eat, you discuss the day to come. And oh, how I would love to be a fly on the wall there.