The fact that PVV party leader Geert Wilders tried to sabotage a book written by his long-serving party secretary shows he has lost faith in one of his closest colleagues, according to the NRC.

Martin Bosma, who has been with the anti-immigration party from its inception, is not only party secretary but also Wilders’ speech writer and media strategist.

His book about South Africa is considered controversial. In the manuscript, which is in the hands of the NRC, Bosma writes that the ‘left’ is planning to put the European population in the Netherlands in the same position as white Afrikaners (of Dutch ancestry) found themselves in South Africa when apartheid ended.

Bosma writes that ‘the Afrikaners are the guinea pigs in a multicultural laboratory’ and that ‘the Afrikaners are us in 50 or 100 years’.

Unhappy

According to the NRC, Wilders was unhappy with the book and was particularly concerned it should not be published until after the European elections, which take place on Thursday.

He emailed his colleagues ‘please be careful with mb’, and encouraged them to dissuade Bosma from publication.

When in October 2013 publisher Prometheus/Bert Bakker refused to publish the book, Wilders emailed: ‘wonderful news’, the NRC said.