With the most dramatic result in the history of Dutch elections, the liberal democratic D66 appears to have inched ahead of populist Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom, winning an election for the first time. On Thursday morning, both parties were projected at 26 seats out of the 150-seat chamber, neck-and-neck but with a 2,000-vote lead for D66.
Under its dynamic 38-year-old leader – and former junior athlete – Rob Jetten, the progressive party made a last-minute sprint in the final week of the campaign, when a third of Dutch voters make up their minds. It has almost tripled its current nine seats and scored the best result in the history of the party, formed by discontented democrats in 1966.
‘Millions of Dutch people have turned a page today,’ said Jetten to a roomful of waving Dutch flags at a concert space in Leiden. ‘They have said goodbye to the politics of negativism, of hate, of “we can’t do it”. Millions chose the power of the positive.’
Could it be a signal to other countries seeing the rise of populists?
Two years ago it was a different story. In a shock result, Wilders – the inflammatory anti-Islam, anti-asylum MP at the heart of Dutch politics for two decades – won 37 seats and a quarter of the vote. A four-party coalition billed as the most right-wing ever was an unhappy marriage from the start, even in a system where coalitions are the norm. Within 11 months, Wilders collapsed the government, saying his partners did not support a new 10-point plan to ‘stop’ asylum, which made up 12 per cent of immigration last year (below the European average, although in a densely-populated country).
The BBB farmer-citizen movement, good governance party New Social Contract and establishment centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) accused Wilders of confecting the row; he insisted, ‘I was worked against’ and withdrew his ministers. The resulting ‘snap’ election happened on 29 October.
Despite a campaign in which Wilders tried to make it all about asylum, D66 and the GreenLeft-Labour movement argued that migrant labour in farming, distribution, meat processing and high-tech industries is a more important factor in controlling population growth. After analysing its loss at the last election, D66 borrowed from the playbook of Europe’s populists, says Roy Kramer, author of Why Wilders Does Win: addressing the middle in clear, positive language, with a ‘yes, we can’ campaign slogan, het kan wél.
Could it be a signal to other countries seeing the rise of populists – addressing concerns seriously but taking a positive tone? ‘Over the last fifty years, political parties have increasingly become a kind of gated community for the highly educated,’ said Kramer at a D66 conference in October.
With the best intentions they tailor the story to themselves, while two-thirds of the population is not highly educated. I’m really worried that the populists are taking over and winning election after election in all of Europe, also in Japan, also in the US. We should discuss openly how we can win seats back.
Joyce Boverhuis, a pollster for EenVandaag, said that on the eve of the election, 35 per cent of voters were still unsure of how to cast their vote. A key issue, she says, was the competence gap of populists in power. ‘Migration, housing, healthcare, and safety – but above all: the sense that the Netherlands needs to be governed again.’
Although Wilders won the last election, he did not convince his coalition parties that he could be prime minister, so former spy chief Dick Schoof was appointed without representing a party. He was judged to have done his best, but was politically impotent. ‘During the Schoof cabinet, many Dutch people felt there was too much infighting, chaos and too little being achieved,’ she added. ‘Voters also clearly looked at the qualities of the party leader and which parties might be able to form a stable government together.’
Jetten was clearly the winner in this regard – always a strong contender but seen as the odds-on favourite after strong performances in debates in which he told Wilders he would beat him. A former climate minister and deputy leader, the dynamic and media-friendly D66 leader was increasingly seen as a star. One right-wing talk show host, normally hostile to the party, recently suggested he was almost ‘an ideal son-in-law’ – although he would have had to have had sons, because Jetten is openly gay and in a relationship with Argentinian hockey player Nicolás Keenan.
In a room of 700 ‘flabbergasted’ D66 supporters, former party chairman Victor Eberhardt said Jetten’s optimism was authentic. ‘It really is his own language and it is so believable because it’s true,’ he said. ‘We all want to be led by someone who is taking us somewhere. He has a story, a vision.’
Even if Wilders pips D66 to the post as the largest party, his PVV has been excluded by all other major parties; the country will be looking to the centrist Jetten to form a coalition, probably across left-right lines. GreenLeft-Labour leader Frans Timmermans withdrew after his party lost five seats, removing a polarising figure for the right. But with trust in politics at 4 per cent, D66 figures concede it won’t be easy to form a government.
‘We might be the biggest in these results but millions chose other parties,’ said Jetten, embracing the label of a progressive patriot. ‘And I feel a great responsibility in the period ahead not just to be there for the D66 voter, but for all of the other Dutch people…and that means leadership from all of the political forces in that political middle to seek cooperation.’
What’s certain is that a Jetten premiership would mean a renewed embrace of Europe and an attempt to repair Dutch credibility in Brussels. He has spent months travelling the country, talking to voters far beyond its well-educated base, and even winning votes directly from Wilders. ‘I’m very proud that we’ve shown, not just with D66 but with several other parties, that it is possible to beat the populist movement and to beat the extreme right,’ he told local and international media.
Observers like Hans-Martien ten Napel, associate law professor at Leiden University, warn that certain parts of the electorate have become increasingly frustrated – and more years of stagnation may lead to a rebound of the far right. But for now, D66 wants to seize its chance. ‘Rob has an incredibly positive story,’ said Eindhoven deputy mayor Robert Strijk on election night. ‘After years where everything was negative – criticism, hate – he came with hope. Het kan wél. Yes, we can.’
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