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May 17, 2024 - 2:30pm
“We are writing history,” said Dutch Right-wing leader Geert Wilders, announcing the new Dutch coalition yesterday. “The PVV [Party for Freedom], my own party, is coming into government, into the centre of power and we are enormously proud of this. At a stroke, we go from being the biggest opposition party to the biggest party of government.”
An experimental Right-wing coalition, for the first time including this radical party in the heart of power, has provoked mixed reactions in the Netherlands — until recently one of the world’s most outward-looking economies.
After winning the largest share of MPs in a shock last-minute swing last November, largely on an “asylum stop” ticket, Wilders bagged 37 of 150 MPs and the first right to attempt a coalition. But it has been a bumpy six-month process to form an uneasy accord with the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the pro-reform New Social Contract (NSC), and the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB).
Three of the four parties have never before been part of government. For the past decade, after his disastrous confidence-and-supply role in a 2010 administration and increasingly inflammatory rhetoric, Wilders was formally excluded as a potential partner by the major Dutch parties.
He still has a criminal record for insulting Dutch Moroccans as a group, while his manifesto contained unconstitutional pledges to ban Islamic schools, mosques and the Qur’an, and hold a referendum on leaving the EU. To achieve any kind of government, Wilders promised to respect the constitution, said he would put his anti-Islam views “on ice”, and symbolically withdrew three law proposals which had effectively been shelved anyway. But this is no ordinary administration, even in a country used to a “polder” model to bridge differences.
The price of cooperation, demanded by Pieter Omtzigt’s NSC, is a new kind of technocratic government. Half of the ministers will be recruited from business. The four party leaders will sit in parliament, heading their own parties. What’s more, although the convention is for the largest parliamentary party’s leader to become prime minister, Wilders did not succeed in winning enough cross-party confidence to take the role. The yet-to-be-announced PM will instead be an appointment.
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SubscribeThe price of any coalition is some level of disappointment. It is an inevitable tradeoff of such a system like the Netherlands’. When an electoral majority is practically impossible to achieve, finding allies will involve compromises. One key is the principles on which the major party/leader will not budge. Which are those and which are areas where give and take is possible?
That’s the problem with proportional representation. It leads to endless logjams
Well, both the proportional system and FPTP have their advantages and disadvantages.
Indeed, coalition governments might result (and often do result) in unwieldy decision-making processes. On the other hand, such coaition governents might come up with solutions that are acceptable for a larger number of citizens.
And might also make it less likely to have seesaw policies as each new administration pretends to try to enact its policies.
Yes, I also found it strange that the author was so sure about the voters’ disappointment. In Europe, most people are accustomed to having coalition governments and are realistic enough about what could be achieved when a multi-party government is in power.
Coalitions are also good at exposing opportunistic liars like Nick Clegg who said he would “never“ support tuition fees.
But at least they are making an effort, unlike some political parties elsewhere who talk up their promises and downgrade their deliveries.
I wonder why this Turkish writer has articles in the Spectator and UnHerd rubbishing a government that is trying to restrict immigration (and Muslims).
Its a real puzzler.
2nd paragraph and “until recently one of the world’s most outward-looking economies” And there you have the first snipe
I would have thought it was obvious, because it is clear that the entire media and the entire political spectrum from George Galloway on the so-called left to Reform UK on the right support Islamisation in the UK. It is fascinating, if frightening, to watch the manner in which post-Brexit this transformation is being ever more openly pursued. Since the late 90s the current state ideology of multicultural communitarianism promotes this transformation.
If the Dutch like being a poor and helpless minority in their own country, then they should not vote for Wilders or his ilk. If they don’t, then they should.
That could be said equally of the British people, perhaps even more so.
European governments have little or no control of policy around immigration, asylum, “human rights” law, farming and the environment. These “competencies” have all been derogated to the EU and the ECHR. It doesn’t matter who you elect as long as you remain part of these bodies.
Once you have delegated authority to the ECHR – who can expand the legal scope of Human Rights law to whatever they (or their EU Commission friends) like – then every area is effectively an EU “competency”.
TGWL. Thank God We Left
Because Britain was not in the Schengen Zone it had total control over migration from outside of the EU. The ECHR is not an EU institution and in any case its court has no power to enforce its judgements. Macron and others often ignore its judgements, particularly on migration and integration issues. In fact the UK quietly opted out of its clauses on Discrimination years ago. These clauses stood in the way of the UK elite’s desire to give special rights to minority ethno-religious “communities” and protected groups.
Remember Brexit? The Dutch Blob is as big and as powerful as the British Blob. Moreover, country is ruled from Brussels. Hence the quote from that pathological liar Frans Timmermans. That man ate so much foie gras in Maison du Cygne you can serve him as a Christmas goose.
The coalition hasn’t even started and I am already disappointed. Like hundreds of thousands of Dutch people in recent years, I will most likely emigrate to a more sensible location. Denmark has a strict immigration and asylum policy for which they didn’t seek or need EU approval.
The value of the euro/dollar is for all pretence and purposes worthless I’ve never seen less value for money. The persistent influx of low skilled migrants to Europe has pushed rents and property prices to unsustainable levels. Some of us win a lot of us suffer.
The point is that in gaining 37 out of 150 seats in Parliament Wilders did not in any real sense WIN the election, and in fact in a FPTP system like Britain or even France, less that a fifth of the votes would not have got him a sniff at power. Had he along with perhaps the BBB party managed to have got an absolute majority in Parliament things would be different. He would have had more power to negotiate with Brussels and the ability to have prevailed with obstacles at home.