Dutch anti-mass-migration firebrand Geert Wilders is gambling on a snap election to give a fresh mandate to his border control plan, as he withdraws his party from the coalition government.
Geert Wilders blamed the other parties in the Netherlands’ four-way coalition government for refusing to sign off on his asylum and border reform plans, and for trying to change the original coalition agreement, when he withdrew the votes of his Party for Freedom (PVV) members of parliament on Tuesday morning. Prime Minister Dick Schoof, a technocrat installed as leader as the other parties were unwilling to crown kingmaker Wilders as Prime Minister himself, will make a statement to the Dutch parliament on Tuesday.
While the other parties involved, the Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB) party, the New Social Contract (NCC), and the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), initially expressed hope of inviting support from the left to keep the government limping on — and this is theoretically feasible — observers doubt that this would be likely. The government will continue in ‘caretaker’ mode. It will be unable to make major new decisions, and it appears the only option left is fresh national elections to select a new parliament.
As reported last week, Wilders had been expressing increasing frustration. He claimed that despite being the largest party in government, the migration reform agenda the PVV had been elected to implement was being stymied. Wilders said: “We have not signed for a cabinet where only asylum seeker centres will be added. The PVV has been very reasonable and patient over the past year, but as of today, the gloves are going off.”
Wilders has called for the Dutch border to be shut to new asylum seekers, the chain-migration “family reunification” programme to be suspended, an increase in deportations, and that migrants be de-prioritised for government-funded housing. If these basic policy points were not met, he would withdraw his party’s votes in the parliament and collapse the government, which happened today.
Going back to the country for a fresh mandate is fraught with risk for Wilders. His recent polling has put PVV at around 20 per cent, less than the 23.5 per cent he achieved at the 2023 national elections, and a fall from near-30-per-cent polling he was enjoying last year in the early days of this government. Yet, as recently demonstrated in Poland, upset right-wing victories are totally possible when proposals are pitched against a nakedly globalist alternative, and by withdrawing from government over its failure to deliver any meaningful change on border issues, Wilders will have an urgent electoral issue to sell to the public.
Wilders was roundly condemned by his erstwhile coalition partners for withdrawing his support, who characterised him as having walked away when things were getting tough, rather than acting on principle. The opposition parties, however, treated the prospect of fresh elections — and a stab at power — with glee.
Frans Timmermans, the former European Union commissioner who now leads the Netherlands’ largest opposition party, the Green-Left, said, “We want elections as soon as possible,” explaining that a stable government is impossible otherwise. Denk, the Netherlands’ Islamist party, said they saw fresh elections as a chance to prevent the asylum reform from succeeding and to prevent the right from ever governing the country again, reports NOS.
The party, whose spokesman had controversially said of Wilders’ PVV party coming in first place in the 2023 elections that it felt “like my 9/11,” stated through party leader Stephan van Baarle on Tuesday: “The cabinet wanted to implement terrible plans… The real battle begins now. I hope that there will be as large a counter-movement as possible and that there will never be another far-right government.”
While a date for fresh elections has not yet been called, the last time a Dutch government collapsed, a vote was held four-and-a-half months hence. The election campaign featured several televised debates and saw FvD leader Thierry Baudet beaten around the head with a beer bottle by far-left ‘Antifa’ activists as he campaigned.
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