It seems a very long time ago that Caroline van der Plas sat in a television studio and declared: “I want to be with Pieter!” Back in those distant days of late October, the idea of Geert Wilders storming the elections was so far-fetched that he didn’t even get a seat at the College Tour debate that kicked off the election campaign. Van der Plas had spent the summer courting Omtzigt, praising his experience and popularity with voters. But in August Omtzigt made his excuses and left to form his own party, NSC, explaining in passing that he hadn’t gone into politics to shore up the meat industry.
It was the start of a stream of sneers and side-swipes that has permeated relations between the leaders working to put together a right-wing government. Geert Wilders denounced Omtzigt early in the process as a “slippery Catholic”. Dilan Yeşilgöz of the VVD took a pop at Wilders in a recent party conference speech for running an election campaign on angry tweets and empty promises. Omtzigt took umbrage at Van der Plas’s failure to condemn Farmers Defence Force when it named his party’s agriculture spokesman, Harm Holman, in a list of targets. “Veiled threats are not OK,” Omtzigt lectured on Twitter.
The bickering and backbiting might have been an entertaining sideshow if there were any sign of a government on the horizon. But after 11 weeks the parties appear to be stuck in the doldrums. Van der Plas has long since stopped singing Omtzigt’s praises. Yeşilgöz is hamstrung by a party that is divided over the prospect of power-sharing with the PVV and by her botched handling of the law to redistribute asylum seekers – the most substantial piece of legislation to be passed during the negotiations. The trust between Omtzigt and Ronald Plasterk, the former Labour minister chosen by Wilders to chair the talks, has burned down to its stumps: when Omtzigt accused Plasterk of holding back a set of ministerial reports on the public finances, Plasterk retorted that it was a “muddled tale”. And Wilders is starting to flirt openly with the idea of forcing new elections.
The last option is less straightforward than it looks. Opinion polls suggest the PVV could win as many as 50 seats if an election were to be held now. Many commentators blithely assume that a further boost for the PVV is pre-ordained. But that ignores the main lesson of the last 12 months, which is that the Dutch electorate is extraordinarily volatile. In the course of 2023 voters have mobilised behind three front-runners. First the BBB, which scooped 20% of the vote in the provincial elections in March. Then Omtzigt’s NSC. which was polling at nearly a quarter of the vote when it was launched in August. And finally the PVV, which reached that level in November and according to some polls now stands at around 30%.
But as Wilders knows all too well, past polls are no guarantee of future performance. Just two weeks before the election the PVV was running in fourth place. Many VVD voters made a tactical switch to block Frans Timmermans and the left-wing alliance of Labour (PvdA) and GroenLinks. NSC supporters drifted away from Omtzigt, while the floating voters who backed the BBB in March now shifted their weight behind Wilders. The PVV was a second choice for many people who were disillusioned with Omtzigt, unconvinced by Yeşilgöz and tired of Van der Plas. If another leader emerges in the next election campaign as a credible first choice, those votes could ebb away from the PVV as quickly as they swept in.
There are other reasons why Wilders will be wary of rushing into fresh elections. As the largest party, the PVV will be scrutinised far more closely. Wilders will no longer get the free ride on immigration that allowed him to sneak up on the guard rail in the last days of the previous campaign. He will either have to water down his manifesto – making him less appealing to protest voters – or find ways to finance his ambitious spending plans. And the PVV’s chronic shortage of candidates to fill seats in parliament and ministerial posts is a serious Achilles heel. During the 2017 campaign Wilders flew into a rage when Mark Rutte casually dropped the name of Dion Graus, one of Wilders’s most trusted henchmen, into a debate. Graus, one of the PVV’s original nine MPs from 2006, was declared persona non grata in parliament for several years after being repeatedly accused of sexual harassment, though prosecutors eventually dropped the cases. The fact that Wilders squirms at the mention of his name will not be lost on the PVV’s rivals.
November’s election has widened the PVV’s talent pool but not deepened it: its new cohort of MPs includes Joeri Pool, who stood up in parliament last week to attack the Dutch government’s “constant provocations against the Russian Federation”. It is a bold claim to make in a country that lost 200 citizens when Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian missile 10 years ago. Wilders’s promise to put the “Dutch first” does not, apparently, extend to those unfortunate enough to have been murdered by Vladimir Putin’s regime.
Wilders is strong, but also vulnerable. Nobody survives for 25 years in politics without developing a keen sense of impending threats. As soon as Pieter Omtzigt quit the negotiating table, Wilders fired off a pre-emptive strike, warning he had left the door open for Frans Timmermans. A revival of the left may seem far off now, but Wilders is aware of how merciless the Dutch can be to parties that fall short of expectations. In modern politics, there is no such thing as a loyal voter.
WordsForPress 