The Dutch government has been in power for little over three months, but given the deep-seated mistrust, public spats and the lack of any real common vision, it is difficult to see it hanging on much longer.

Geert Wilders, who promised the sun will shine again in the Netherlands, is busy jaunting off to Italy and Hungary to hang out with his far-right friends and reposting Viktor Orban’s announcement that the “patriots” will “take back Brussels”.

At the same time, he tweets snide jibes towards his coalition partner, VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz, who had the tenacity to criticise Wilders’ right-hand woman, asylum minister Marjolein Faber, for being too slow to act on immigration.

“Yesilgoz thinks Faber should be more ambitious and act more quickly,” Wilders said. “Quite a joke coming from the mouth of representative of a party that has been (partly) responsible for the failing asylum policy in the Netherlands for the past decade.”

It was far from Wilders’ first sneer at his coalition partners – the VVD, BBB and NSC, who agreed to go into partnership with the PVV for reasons that are becoming increasingly hard to fathom.

Bad signs

Wilders thinks Faber, who wants to put up signs at refugee centres pointing out that “we are working here to send you back”, is gold. Coalition partner Caroline van der Plas, from the pro-farming BBB, thinks the signs would be the act of a bully. But the BBB’s deputy prime minister, housing minister Mona Keijzer, thinks they’re great and had no problem in saying so. Party and coalition unity, anyone?

Meanwhile the fourth coalition party, NSC, is tying itself in knots trying not to rock the boat on matters of good governance, even as Wilders chips away at every semblance of decency this coalition might have had.

In particular, his backing for declaring a crisis in the Dutch asylum system so that parliament can by bypassed, is proving unpalatable for NSC and its leader Pieter Omtzigt, who is home with stress following the budget negotiations which almost led to the coalition’s collapse.

The so-called asylum crisis is largely of the new government’s own making and refugee numbers are well below official forecasts. The total number of applicants in 2024 is on course to reach 50,000 this year, the same as in 2022 and 2023.

Moreover, the ministry is presided over by a minister who makes flying visits to pose with border guards and Danish officials, showing off her new flowery dresses, but does not seem able to pick up the phone and talk to the local mayors trying their best to stop the system grinding to a halt.

Little progress

This whole house of cards is ostensibly presided over by Dick Schoof, a former career civil servant and head of both the immigration and security services, whose nervous grimace every time he sees a journalist approaching with a microphone is fast becoming as irritating as Mark Rutte’s failing memory.

The Dutch general election took place just over 10 months ago and this government has been in place for three. And what has been achieved since then? Well, the government said this week it is planning to look into putting up the speed limit on four stretches of road back to 130 kph.

It has announced plans to put up value added tax on “middle class hobbies” like theatres, books and museums and done a u-turn on sending a few thousand Mpox vaccines to Africa.

It has ditched its opposition to the introduction of zero-emission zones in the cities – which it had no control over anyway – and has bowed down to corporate pressure and retained the expat tax break, which will now become known as the 27% ruling.

Soap opera

On the really big issues, like dealing with the housing shortage, the manure mountain and nitrogen-based pollution, there has been no progress at all so far. We’re still scrabbling around with plans for “housing summits” later in the year.

Farming minister Femke Wiersma, whose previous claim to fame was being a contestant on TV reality soap The Farmer Wants a Wife, has torn up a voluntary buyout scheme which would have reduced the number of livestock on Dutch farms, and consequently manure and nitrogen emissions.

There were a lot of raised eyebrows on X last weekend when it emerged The Economist had published an article describing the Dutch government as a “mess”.

A mess? It’s bloody chaos.