The established Dutch political parties don’t know how to cope with the Wilders phenomenon, writers Giles Scott-Smith of the Holland Bureau.

CDA and VVD were playing funny games last week, each one trying to avoid any sense that they wanted a coalition with Wilders’ PVV, while at the same time trying to shift the blame for not forming such a coalition to the other.
More proof that the establishment parties don’t know what to do with the Wilders phenomenon, and potentially the seeds of their own downfall. Wilders has been on best behaviour since the elections to show that whatever happens, he won’t be the one to blame should the talks collapse.
This approach – shrewd, sensible, and exactly focusing on the weakness of the other parties – has succeeded and will almost certainly continue to do so. The most recent opinon poll places the PVV on 28 seats, only one behind the VVD, with Labour and the CDA sinking further.
The dangers of closing Wilders out because of his intolerance and prejudice will only heighten his appeal for those who do not think they are heard by the other parties. Something is going on in the land and Wilders is the one who is picking it up.
Two pieces in the NRC this weekend put this situation in an interesting perspective. Many commentators tend to throw the various right-wing parties active (and increasingly successful) across Europe into the same basket to dismiss them all as reactionary xenophobes.
True, there are big differences. But the recent success of both Wilders and Bart de Wever’s Flemish nationalists in Belgium has triggered another look. Former EU bureaucrat and NRC editor Derk Jan Eppink – a pure ‘insider’ – sees it as a reaction to the borderless world that we are all supposed to be enjoying, where cultural difference is to be enjoyed not feared, and where every product is available off the shelf or the web thanks to the boundless plenty of free trade: ”In the time of globalisation there is no place for village patriotism.”
Its the classic integration-fragmentation dilemma. Globalisation brings everyone together, but this is only in the eyes of the cosmopolitan elite – others exactly don’t want to be brought together.
Its scary, unknown, not tradition, and costly. More and more people have seen their livelihoods and identities exactly undermined and undervalued by this borderless wonderland, whether its the EU or the WTO or some other far-away undemocratic body that seems to have claimed the right to deliver rules and regulations on everything.
And because these counter-trends are opposed to the march of progress – more economic interdependence, more cultural integration – they are easily typecast as a kind of hopeless neanderthal reaction which should be either dismissed for their xenophobia or ridiculed for their simplistic conservatism. You don’t have to like this kind of politics, but you shouldn’t turn your back on what is happening either.
This scenario is now playing itself out in The Hague on a small but significant scale. The CDA, the key to a right-wing cabinet with the VVD and the PVV, pretended to go along with this by saying that the other two parties should first sort out a deal and then they would join the discussion.
For both VVD and PVV this was useless – why sort out a deal which they would then have to re-negotiate with the CDA? As Wilders said, “you don’t negotiate with an empty chair.” By doing this CDA tried to claim it wasn’t their fault that it broke down. But its as transparent as can be.
The next alternative is the famous Paars-Plus, so named after the Wim Kok governments of the 1990s between Labour, VVD, D 66, with the addition of GroenLinks. But no-one expects this really to come together – the differences are too great, especially on hugely significant areas like public spending cuts, mortgage tax relief, and defence policy, and anyway why would the VVD, the big winner, sit down in a minority with three centre-left parties with mixed results from the elections? A long and winding road is in prospect.
Not only that but the next issue is what this will do to the PVV. The VVD under Rutte is exactly trying to profile itself as the acceptable rightist alternative to the PVV. Joining all those lefties is hardly the best way to do this and will open up the VVD’s right flank to a surge of new pro-Wilders’ voters in the future. Especially as the cabinet, probably unstable, will try to push through painful spending cuts. The likely scenario then is a major election battle in two or three years time that will pitch principled left versus populist right like never before.
Is there a way out? Professor of political communication Claes de Vreese thinks so, looking at the similarities with the Danish situation. Since 2001 the Liberals and the Conservatives have held minority governments together by arranging for support from within parliament from the nationalist Danks Folkeparti, which held around 12% of the popular vote.
By going along with key areas of the Folkeparti’s agenda – tough immigration laws being number one – the other two mainstream parties could rely on a governable situation. The Folkeparti also avoided actual participation in government, which would have undermined their anti-establishment, ‘outsider’ political profile.
Its an interesting option. It would require VVD and CDA to go ahead and form a minority cabinet with only 52 seats, requiring the extra 24 of the PVV to back them from the assembly to hold it together.
It would give the PVV a chance to have influence without the responsibility of rule. It would also seriously test them out, because it would prevent a left-dominated cabinet, something which they obviously oppose and so something which they should work to avoid. Would it work, or would Wilders just go for broke and collapse the whole house of cards at the first opportunity? Who knows. But we are in unknown terrain in Europe these days.
The UK has its first peacetime coalition since God knows when, Sarkozy chooses ministers from the left, the right, in fact anywhere he wants, and Belgium is about to be confined to the history books. The question is whether the Christian Democrats and the VVD can get a grip on what this would require from themselves to make it work.
A cordon sanitaire approach against the PVV – even a pretend cordon sanitaire – is a road to nowhere, if not a road to disaster. Can they look beyond this? As Eppink says, it looks highly unlikely.

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