2023-11-25 23:35:40
Two things were clear months before the elections in the Netherlands: the name of the prime minister and dozens of parliamentarians was going to change. 40 deputies, a quarter of the Tweede Kamer (Lower House), had announced that they would retire from national politics. And even more surprising, three of the four leaders of the ruling conservative coalition had also said they were leaving.
Ironically, in this sea of electoral changes the big winner has been the far-right politician Geert Wilders, who will soon become the most senior deputy. How to understand the political earthquake that has left Wilders and the PVV, his party, in first position? How will his victory affect Dutch and European politics?
The lessons
The first and most important lesson is one that the country’s politicians should already know, because it has been repeated over and over again over the last three decades in the Netherlands and the rest of Western Europe: if elections revolve around to the agenda of the extreme right, and especially, around the “problem” of immigration, the extreme right wins. We saw it recently in Sweden.
Another lesson from the 2022 Swedish elections is that when the campaign revolves around the far right’s suitability to govern, the far right wins. In the final week of the campaign, when the PVV staged a surprising rise in the polls, article after article was published talking about Wilders’ “softer tone,” which seemed to have softened his “sharper edges.”
Always witty but almost never critical, the Dutch media even referred to him as Geert Milders. [juego de palabras con el vocablo inglés milder, que puede traducirse como ‘más suave’]. In reality, and as Wilders himself stressed on several occasions, it was not a change of program, but of strategy. The politician has not moderated his extremism, much less reversed his positions on immigration or Islam. Instead, what he has done is say that there are “bigger problems” right now than curbing immigration.
Ultimately, the person responsible for Wilders’ mammoth victory is, ironically, Mark Rutte, his personal nemesis. The outgoing conservative prime minister (from the VVD party) blew up the government coalition over the specific issue of asylum seekers. Rutte thus moved the center of the debate, which until then had been located in the controversy over the use of nitrogen in agriculture and the (supposed) division between countryside and city – which promoted a populist formation from the countryside, the BBB party, giving him a massive victory in the provincial elections in early 2023. Rutte’s VVD hoped to dominate the campaign if it returned to the issue of immigration and the supposed division between natives and immigrants.
Instead, as always happens, the one who has won has been the far-right PVV. As the Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Pen said almost half a century ago, the people always prefer the original to the copy.
Also contributing to the normalization of Wilders was the decision of Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, Rutte’s successor at the head of the VVD, to open herself to the possibility of a government coalition with the far-right politician in the hope of occupying the position of prime minister. Bored by a campaign that did not raise passions, Dutch journalists were quick to talk about that possibility. It must also be said that Wilders has been able to make excellent use of his opportunities, showing his great experience and political skill in interviews and debates.
A new reality
But Wilders’ electoral victory may end up turning into a political defeat. Yeşilgöz-Zegerius had opened himself to a coalition with Wilders as a junior partner, but in the last days of the campaign he made clear his absolute rejection of a government under the far-right politician. On the other hand, the New Social Contract (NSC) party of the anti-establishment Pieter Omtzigt has completely ruled out allying with Wilders’ PVV.
The magnitude of Wilders’ victory and the enormous advantage that his party has gained over the VVD, which came in third place, could force Yeşilgöz-Zegerius’ party to form an anti-Wilders coalition alongside Omtzigt’s NSC and the progressive alliance. of Greens/Social Democrats led by Frans Timmermans. The main problem with this possible coalition is that the Greens/Social Democrats (GL/PvdA) are the majority party and will demand the position of prime minister for Timmermans. This could provoke an uprising among the members and voters of the VVD, the party of Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, who reached out to Wilders but rejected Timmermans, saying that he would “tear the country to pieces.”
Whatever coalition emerges from the negotiations, the role of the Netherlands in the rest of the world will change, and especially in the European Union (EU). With the departure of Rutte, the longest democratically elected political leader in the EU, the country will no longer have as much weight beyond its capacity as in the last ten years. Secondly, although the Netherlands has not been an engine of European integration for some time, under Rutte’s leadership the various coalitions that governed the country in the last decade were more bark than bite.
With the clear victory of openly eurosceptic parties such as the PVV and the NSC, the conservative VVD will probably focus even more on Dutch European politics, further complicating matters in a coalition with the europhile GL/PvdA, and especially with Timmermans; as well as with the liberal D66.
But for now, the Netherlands has to accept a new reality. After almost 25 years catering to the far-right voter, with the theoretical goal of defeating far-right parties, the largest party in Parliament is, by far, a far-right party. More than 20 years after the rise of politician Pim Fortuyn (assassinated in 2002), the time may have come for the Netherlands to finally begin an honest and open debate about its problem with the far right.
Translation by Francisco de Zárate.
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