Dutch elections

I approached the Dutch elections with hope. We had had a government fronted by the rather rightwing VVD since forever! Would this be the moment that would change? We already knew we were going to get a new prime minister, as Rutte he said he would step down. But who would be next?

I seem to remember that when I went to bed on election day, the VVD was still expected to win, although the Green/Labour combination was going strong as well. When I woke up the next morning it was clear things had worked out differently. And I'm not one to regret an election defeat by the VVD, but they had been beaten by a party that was considerably more rightwing than they are. It was Wilders’ PVV with by far the most votes. That was depressing.

I must say, I'm not sure what happens next. Quite a lot of parties have historically been not very keen on joining a coalition with the PVV. But maybe that's easy when they're not a very big party. Maybe everything changes when they are the ones to create a coalition. 

The VVD has said they don't want to join the PVV, but that might just be their opening shot. We are probably looking at many months of coalition negotiations; anything could still happen! The person who has been tasked with creating a coalition (a former Labour politician, of all people) seems to have got the job because he had written a column about a possible coalition of PVV, VVD, NSC (a brand new party, founded by a bloke who left the Christian Democrats) and BBB (colloquially known as the angry farmers party). They would have a comfortable majority! And even without the angry farmers they would have a majority. But do they want to work together?

I think a coalition like that is more plausible than that coalition negotiations fail completely, and that all the left-leaning parties can then try to sort something out. You need about 10 parties, not all of them particularly likely, if you want to make a lefty government. I don't really see that happen.

Altogether it is quite possible will end up with a coalition that involves the party that has been in power since forever, and has seen its coalition collapse twice because its treatment of minorities was just too abominable; a party that is aggressively anti-immigration and anti-Muslim; a party that largely owes its existence to resistance to climate measures; and a party that didn't even exist until last August. Things are not looking well! One can but hope that the resulting mess will remain within reason…

The enormous ballot paper that was used for people voting in person; pic by Vera de Kok