Far-right Freedom Party suffers shock reversal in Dutch elections

BRUSSELS - Far-right and anti-immigrant parties have long thrived in Europe, notching up rapid advances in most national ballots held on the continent.

No longer. With all the votes now counted in the Netherlands’ Oct 29 General Election, the far-right Freedom Party led by Mr Geert Wilders – a politician who gained notoriety with his hate-filled speeches against immigrants and Islam – has suffered a shock electoral reversal, holding only 26 seats in the country’s 150-seat Parliament.

The next Dutch government is now almost certain to be formed by the Democrats 66 (D66) party.

This centrist liberal movement ran a campaign opposing everything the Freedom Party stands for and captured the same number of parliamentary seats.

Because the centrist party is much more acceptable to other political parties, the 38-year-old Mr Rob Jetten, the D66 leader, is now considered far more likely to form the next government, thereby becoming the Netherlands’ youngest-ever prime minister, as well as the country’s first openly gay government leader.

The result has stunned the Dutch political establishment and opinion pollsters, all of whom firmly expected Mr Wilders’ party to be triumphant in the latest ballot.

Still, the method by which the Wilders “electoral wave” was defeated in the Netherlands will now become a copybook example for similar political battles in key European countries such as France or Germany.

Mr Wilders founded the Freedom Party – commonly known by its Dutch language abbreviation of PVV – two decades ago with a campaign to stop what he views as the “Islamisation of the Netherlands”.

He has frequently argued that all immigration to the Netherlands should be stopped, and that those who settled in the country should be paid to leave it.

Mr Wilders was frequently hauled before the courts for his hateful speeches and was periodically banned from entering various countries.

But his popularity at home increased, as the migration issue became central to Dutch politics.

In the 2021 General Election in the Netherlands, Mr Wilders’ PVV saw 17 MPs elected. In the 2023 elections, however, the PVV captured 37 parliamentary seats and became the country’s single biggest party.

So, the man on the fringes of Dutch politics was pivoted to centre stage, and the PVV became a member of the governing coalition in the Netherlands.

Mr Wilders’ coalition partners went to great lengths to accommodate him.

For instance, the Dutch government declared an “asylum crisis” in the country, refusing to process new applications from would-be migrants.

Yet none of this satisfied Mr Wilders, who wanted both to be in the government while continuing to act as an opposition figure by making outlandish demands to close his country’s borders to any asylum seekers.

That brought about the collapse of the government and the early elections held on Oct 29.

Initial indications were that Mr Wilders’ gamble would pay off, and that his PVV would gain even more parliamentary seats, cementing its increased lock on Dutch politics. But then, the unexpected happened.

The D66 was established during the liberal heyday of the 1960s, so its members are hardly newcomers to Dutch politics.

But, while they were frequently part of coalition governments, they were progressively marginalised by a phenomenon familiar in most European countries: a polarisation of national politics, with most voters migrating to the extremes.

Mr Jetten, who was early in his political career dismissed as a wooden performer and derided as “Robot Jetten”, turned out to be the party’s biggest asset.

Youthful and photogenic, he has turned into the most charismatic figure in national politics, always smiling, always accessible and always coming across as genuine.

Mr Jetten was also a shrewd campaigner. The party’s electoral slogan, “It IS possible”, gave an optimistic message on promises to build new houses in a country that now suffers from an acute shortage of around 400,000 housing units.

The party also took the sting out of the poisonous dispute about immigration by touting a new plan under which asylum seekers will be processed outside the Netherlands.

And Mr Jetten cleverly stole the far right’s electoral props by encouraging D66 supporters to fly the Dutch flag at all opportunities, as a reminder that national symbols do not belong to just right-wing agitators.

“I believe that it is important progressive parties also show that we can be proud of our country,” he said on the hustings, describing himself as a “progressive patriot”.

The outcome was impressive.

In the 2023 election, D66 won just nine seats; now, the party has 26 seats, its best result ever.

Addressing journalists in the early hours of Oct 30, Mr Jetten said the results were nothing short of historic, “because we’ve shown not only to the Netherlands, but also to the world that it’s possible to beat populist and extreme-right movements”.

Mr Jetten also sought to reassure voters that, despite his tender age, he has been in politics for a while and is perfectly capable of running the 18 million-strong nation.

“I’ve become a lot greyer and a lot more experienced,” he joked on election night.

The defeat of the far-right PVV is not in doubt: its vote fell by just over a third. But final electoral results took longer than usual to compute, mainly because the PVV and D66 were so evenly poised, with apparently only 1,000 votes separating them.

Who emerges first in the ballot is essential because, under Dutch political traditions, the leader of the biggest party gets a first chance to form a new coalition government. So, given the fact that a few re-counts are taking place, it is possible that the PVV may remain the biggest single party by a handful of votes.

Nonetheless, there is little doubt that Mr Wilders’ PVV will now be consigned to the political wilderness. Given the way he has behaved over the past two years, no other party would wish to work with the far right.

Yet plenty of parties will enter a coalition led by the D66 movement.

The lesson from the Netherlands is that, given an appealing leader and a shrewd electoral campaign that seeks to move away from toxic immigration questions while emphasising patriotism as a virtue, the hard right in Europe can be defeated.

Not all other European countries can repeat this feat. But at least Europe now has an example of how this can be done.