The right-wing VVD and anti-immigration PVV have both formally launched their campaigns for the September general election by attacking the Socialist Party.

Both VVD leader Mark Rutte and PVV founder Geert Wilders have been criticised for their low profile in the campaign so far, and for avoiding the first televised election debate.
Without naming any party, prime minister Rutte used his speech to the Liberal party’s congress on Saturday to attack socialism, which he said is not the same as ‘social’.
Passing the bill
‘What is social about passing the bill on to the future?’ the VVD leader said during his speech in Rotterdam.
Socialists are playing a political pyramid game, he said before going on to attack the socialist policies practised by the Labour-led Joop den Uyl cabinet in the 1970s. ‘We Liberals never want that again,’ Rutte said.
Europe
Geert Wilders’ kicked off the PVV’s election campaign in Rotterdam on Friday night with a speech that focused on Europe but included attacks on both Rutte and the Socialist Party.
The leader of the anti-immigration party described his former coalition partner as ‘the man who keeps travelling to Brussels to sign another cheque without a guarantee’.
Socialist leader Emile Roemer was described as a man who ‘looks like an uncle who tells jokes on birthdays but is in fact a hardened multiculturalist who will not rest until we are in the minority’.
Polls
Rutte’s VVD and the SP are far in front in the opinion polls, with the PVV trailing in third or fourth place.
During his speech, Wilders repeatedly said the Netherlands should pull out of the EU. Then the Netherlands will be a ‘free country’ again, he said.
Wilders made his speech in front of a die-hard group of some 200 supporters who had gone through intense security to enter the hall.
D66
D66 leader Alexander Pechtold, who has already taken part in several election debates, told his party’s election congress on Saturday a left or right-wing cabinet would not work.
‘A right-wing cabinet like the last one, never again,’ Pechtold said. ‘A similar adventure on the left will not work.’
D66, currently on between 13 and 15 seats in the polls, is likely to have a key role in the formation of the next cabinet.
‘This country needs a stable cabinet to organise things,’ he said. ‘What Rutte promised but failed to deliver, what Roemer does not want and cannot achieve.’
‘More populism, of whatever political colour, is not what our country needs,’ the D66 leader concluded
Comments on the PVV and VVD strategy? Use the comment box below