Britain has an election in four weeks, here it takes four months. But why do we have to wait so long to go to the polls in the Netherlands? asks Robin Pascoe.

The Dutch government fell at the end of February after a rather wobbly few weeks. But it won’t be until June 9, over four months after the collapse, that those of us who can vote will finally get the chance to put a red blob on the ballot paper.
In the meantime, Britain has managed to hold an election within the space of just four weeks.
In the Netherlands, unless the monarch agrees otherwise, elections must be held within 83 days of the cabinet folding – so she has obviously granted an extension here.
Rules
Political parties have 40 days to finalise their list of candidates – the Netherlands does not have a constituency based system and MPs are chosen on the basis of party lists.
Once the lists have been drawn up, there is a maximum 43-day period for the formal campaign and vote itself. Eight days after the election, the new parliament will meet for the first time.
All nice and neatly proscribed in the constitution. But why does it have to take so long? After the initial flurry of activity – resigning party leaders, the appointment of new ones and local elections in between – the momentum here has died away.
Indeed, you’d be hard pushed to know that an election was in the offing. We’ve still got ministers coming up with policy initiatives and we’ve still got MPs meeting and taking votes. It’s almost business as usual in The Hague… so what’s the hurry?
The campaigns have all officially started – if anyone noticed. And there are some big events in the election calendar still to come.
Finances
But then, is the Dutch public really waiting on tenterhooks for the CPB macro-economic forecasting agency to analyse each manifesto to how financially sound it is? As if CPB economists hold the monopoly on truth.
And do we really need five televised debates between all of the main party leaders – not just those with a chance of becoming prime minister.
But witness the amount of coverage in the Dutch papers for the British election campaign: the front page headlines, the analyses, the tv chat shows. The media has shown far more excitment for events on the other side of the channel than for the campaign over here.
And it can’t just be down to the fact that the leader of the Liberal Democrats is half Dutch and speaks the language perfectly.

Fight
The first-past-the-post, constituency-based system in Britain might be badly in need of reform, but it does mean prospective MPs have to get out there on the streets in the area they hope to represent and fight for every vote.
And it does mean the public can punish the MP who has done a bad job or fiddled his or her expenses by not electing them. The public are far more involved in the actual process of forming a government than here. And with just a few weeks of campaigning, they don’t have time to get bored.
Britain is now, of course, faced with the ‘nightmare’ scenario of having to form a coalition government. But with Nick Clegg holding the balance of power, perhaps the influence of his Dutch mum will help remove the British terror of coalitions and compromise.
In that instance, Britain has a lot to learn from the Netherlands. In return, perhaps Dutch politicians can learn how to inject a little fire into the campaign to keep the public interest over the long month still ahead of us.