The results are in, the celebratory parties are over (if there were at all) and the dust is settling.
The next few weeks will most likely see intense negotiations between the winners, as in the fragmented landscape of Dutch politics, nobody achieved a clear mandate to form a government. Based on previous precedent, the battle over policies and portfolios will take weeks, even months.
The losers are easier to identify.
The latest casualty in European voters’ quest for a leader that hears their voice is Frans Timmermans and his GL-PvdA party.
The politician who planned to win (dreamed about becoming prime minister) and ended up losing. Reacting to the blunder, Timmermans announced that he’d quit Dutch politics. A dishonorable out for a politician who’s spent so much time in the Brussels bubble that he finally lost all connection to his own constituency.
Let’s give credit where credit’s due.
It wasn’t only GL-PvdA. Dutch mainstream parties have been incredibly consistent in failing on key issues like housing, cost of living, and climate change for years—and yet, they continue to act as if nothing were really wrong.
But, the Green Links-Labor Party (GL-PvdA) in particular has spent the last few years promising climate action when many Dutch citizens can barely afford to live in their own country any more. Timmermans, ever the quintessential European policymaker, was busy talking about carbon footprints and sustainability while leaving the ordinary Dutch people to fend for themselves.
So, it’s hardly surprising that voters searched for alternatives, and they might have found it in parties like Geert Wilders’ PVV or the other “black sheep”, the far-right party Ja21 which is poised to jump up to 9 seats in total. The same way German voters have turned to the AfD or French voters to National Front.
Based on the results, Wilders’ PVV is neck-to-neck with the Rob Jetten’s centrist D66. The latter is the surprise winner with a dramatic turnaround, leading with barely 15,000 votes.
A mirror to a country sharply divided and so desperately waiting for a change (or at least a way out of the current stalemate) that it’s willing to give a second chance to disgraced “old” parties that got a fresh makeover and a rebranding with new slogans (“yes, we can”), like D66.
The same party that in 2023 won a mere 9 seats, being punished by voters from a series of scandals involving party politicians, like Sidney Smeets, who was accused of grooming and sexually inappropriate behavior. Jetten himself was also responsible for the 2023 fiasco as he led the D66’s campaign into catastrophe.
Wilders’ PVV might have lost seats compared to its result in the previous election(s), but it’s still the second. Yet, again, it’s hardly unlikely that the D66 and the third runner-up, conservative-liberal VVD will be eager to invite them to the coalition talks. If anything, they ruled out any cooperation with Wilders again after he quit the previous coalition in June in a row over restricting asylum rights and curbing migration.
Two topics that were, not that long time ago, the hot potatoes of politics. (Along with the push for a more sensible approach for green transition.)
Now they are pushed to the front, as mainstream parties have finally taken note of their voters’ plight and desire to alter these processes and have started to campaign with messages surprisingly similar to what was once labelled “far-right” and “extremist”. One after the other, governments introduced tough(er) immigration rules, started repatriations, and put brakes on green transition. It’s no longer the “far right” alone that seems to be tuned on the pulse of the electorate. The unfairly vilified “boogeymen” of the so-called far-right can, after all, be right on this or that.
Yet, the firewalls are still there and many parties are still ruling out forming coalition governments with the “far-right”.
Geert Wilders said that he “hoped to join the next governing coalition” – but it seems unlikely due to the resistance of other parties, including the D66.
In comes Rob Jetten.
He and the D66 not only promised to build 10 cities with some 400,000 homes as a quick fix to the housing crisis, but also promised to be the prime minister of all voters, including those who voted for the PVV or the Ja21, as he felt “deep responsibility for them”, and wanted to “represent not only D66 voters, but all Dutch people”.
It is yet to be seen, how he’ll manage to achieve it (that is, if he’ll be able to create a government or at least will be given the chance to try it) without the second largest party in the government.
