NETHERLANDS

Relief swept through European Union supporters in March when Geert Wilders, ‘the Dutch Trump’ was defeated by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. The eurosceptic, anti-immigration, anti-Islam Party for Freedom secured 13.1% of the votes while People’s Party for Freedom won the election with 21.3%. PVV’s policies combine conservative, liberal, right and left standpoints in a populistic programme with a strong focus on immigration, culture and the “de-Islamisation” of the country.

 

Daniele Albertazzi, Senior Lecturer in European Politics at the University of Birmingham says that we can hardly look at the result as a defeat.

 

“In countries like Holland there was never ever any chance of Wilders getting 55% of the vote. But he has done really well, he has increased his seats, so he has hardly been defeated, the only reason why people think he is defeated is because they set the bar too high,” he says.

 

Mr Albertazzi added that voters did not entirely rejected his message, as in the final weeks of the campaign Rutte and ‘the centre-right borrowed some of the keywords by Wilders.’

In his victory speech Mark Rutte declared that they had put an end to “the wrong kind of populism” - suggesting that there is a good one.