Geert Wilders’ political future hangs in the balance following the general election rout
WHEN GEERT Wilders pulled the plug on seven weeks of tortuous austerity talks with the two parties of the Dutch minority coalition government on April 22nd, he was taking perhaps the biggest risk of his political career: that come election day grateful voters would thank him for saving them from €13 billion of “Brussels-driven” austerity.
The government duly collapsed, an election was called, and when prime minister Mark Rutte took almost 1½ hours to hand his resignation to Queen Beatrix at Huis ten Bosch Palace, scathing newspaper cartoonists the next morning showed the doughty 74-year-old monarch trying to push him out the door, scolding: “Get out there! And show a little backbone!”
What followed, though, was a perfect illustration of why, for all his Harry Potter looks and easy smiles, Rutte has just become one of the few European leaders to survive an election during the euro zone crisis. Although the government fell in disarray and the country’s coveted AAA credit rating looked in jeopardy, he and finance minister Jan Kees de Jager put together an ad hoc group of five parties that forced the cuts through parliament by the EU deadline of April 30th.
It should have been impossible, but it worked. The cuts should – if they survive the bargaining for a new coalition – bring the Netherlands’ budget deficit within 3 per cent of GDP next year, in line with euro zone requirements. And Rutte avoided the domestic and international ignominy of being dismissed as a prime minister who could talk the austerity talk – but could not in the end deliver politically.
On Wednesday night, not long before the Dutch electorate added 10 seats to his 2010 tally of 31, returning him as prime minister and putting him in a strong position to form the next government with Labour on 38, Rutte referred to that battle: “We were doing that . . . staying below that 3 per cent, not because of Brussels, but because we believe it is crucial for economic growth.”
By contrast, an initial surge of support for Wilders for saying no to the cuts turned into a backlash in the polls for precipitating a general election at such a difficult time – with economic growth falling and unemployment rising.
And then Wednesday – the day that should have been electoral pay-off day – turned into a political rout. Far from gaining, Wilders’ Freedom Party lost nine seats, more than a third of its 2010 total, dropping from 24 to 15. Unused to such an electoral slap in the face, Wilders was visibly shocked.
Voters whom he believed had become part of his core support had deserted him. Asked by one reporter if he was the big loser of Election 2012, he snapped: “I am not a loser.”
But before being whisked away by his bodyguards, he conceded: “The voters have spoken; we have lost badly. We will continue to fight to protect the Netherlands against becoming a province of a European superstate and against mass immigration. We will never give up.”
Even his former supporters, however, question whether Wilders has lost his sure political touch, noting that since bringing down the government, there has been a litany of minor disasters.
First, Wilders was abandoned by one of his longest-serving MPs, former policeman Hero Brinkman, who opposed the party’s anti-immigrant website inviting supporters who believed their jobs had been taken by immigrants to lodge complaints. The site turned into an EU-wide embarrassment.
The public didn’t like it.
Then, at the launch of his election campaign, two more MPs hijacked proceedings by announcing their resignations, claiming that Wilders was “isolated, out-of-touch and unapproachable”, available only to his closest lieutenant, Martin Bosma.
Three more MPs stood down subsequently: one because of a 2006 conviction for fraud involving cargo shipments; another had never been a school director, as he claimed on his CV; the third, a former army sergeant, turned out to have a criminal record for an inappropriate relationship with a recruit and for intimidating his neighbours.
Even in Limburg, Wilders’ native province, regarded as his power base, there has been in-fighting that has repeatedly leaked out – all of it watched by the public and parsed by the media.
This is all bad news. In the end though, perhaps Wilders’ problem last Wednesday was that he leads an anti-immigrant, anti-Islam party, nothing more, nothing less. During much of the 2012 campaign he looked simply irrelevant. Yes, he was against Europe. But this wasn’t, in the end, about Europe only.
It was the economy, stupid.
