“Hey, hey,” sighs the bartender. There is Geert Wilders. It is mid-October and it is raining in Venlo, his hometown, where the PVV campaign starts with free beer and a haunted house visit. In the pub the audience consists of a mix of PVV supporters, security guards and cameras.
In front of those cameras that afternoon, Wilders had a message that he has been repeating ever since, a little louder: he wants to participate in power. Really and truly. In fact, that campaign started on the day that Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced his departure from the political stage, just after the fall of the fourth Rutte cabinet. “The PVV wants to join the government!” Wilders tweeted the same afternoon.
In Café de Blauw Trap, in Venlo, Wilders also talks about his cabinet ambitions. And he calls VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz, who he once claimed would prefer to see him die and would therefore reduce his security if she had the chance, “a very nice politician, I like her very much.”
It is a question mark hanging over this campaign. Is this really, as is sometimes heard, another PVV? A milder Wilders?
Consistent politician
Wilders’ flirtation with cabinet participation is not entirely new. Not surprising either. Every party leader in the Netherlands must show that a vote for him or her is not a vote thrown away in advance, or at least give that impression. That’s what the voter wants to hear.
The campaign also relies on a recipe that already brought the PVV success in the 2010 elections and a place at the formation table as a tolerating partner. Even then, Wilders combined criticism of Islam with strong statements about migration and a left-wing economic program.
Anyone who sees all the PVV’s election manifestos at a glance will see that they have hardly differed from each other over all these years. The Koran and mosques are banned, an asylum freeze, the fight against dual nationalities: the same thing for years. It is hard to find a more consistent politician at the Binnenhof.
Yet there is certainly something different about Geert Wilders in 2023. Rarely has he made it so difficult for his political colleagues on the right to push him aside. Even the mosque ban is not sacred, it turned out this week. “Islam will never leave our DNA, but the priority now clearly lies with other matters when it comes to the coming period of government,” he said on Tuesday evening. News hour.
The fact that Wilders is on the campaign stage with new energy is largely due to his fellow players. On one: the VVD. Shortly after the fall of the cabinet, VVD MP Ruben Brekelmans had already started the first exploratory movements. Brekelmans said against pursuing a right-wing asylum policy EW Magazine“it may be necessary to find solutions with Geert Wilders.”
It still sounded young, searching. Brekelmans hinted at a minority cabinet or a new tolerance construction. Those ifs and buts disappeared when Yesilgöz introduced herself as the new VVD party leader a month later and immediately wanted to make it clear that she was not a copy of her predecessor. She thought excluding parties, as Rutte had done for years with the PVV, was “Hague stuff.” She first wanted to see what Wilders would come up with in his program.
Wilders wouldn’t be Wilders if he missed that opportunity. Yesilgöz had left the door ajar, Wilders put his foot in between. Wilders proudly said that he had taken “the sharp edges” off his election manifesto, although the adjustments were limited. And when Yesilgöz started to distance himself again in debates and accused him of “destroying” the country by coming up with unfeasible plans, he made his concessions News hour. Look, he wants to say, we will figure this out.
Something different is at play with the New Social Contract. Party leader Pieter Omtzigt excludes Wilders when the question is put to him, but Wilders continues to insist. He leaves no opportunity unused.
Dead serious
During the SBS debate on Thursday evening, Omtzigt laughs at him during the argument between Yesilgöz and GroenLinks-PvdA party leader Frans Timmermans: “I think I will work with you in this way!” Wilders immediately walks up to him and shakes his hand.
Is it all appearances? Everything has been thought through by Wilders, who knows the campaign laws by heart and responds to his political competitors like no other. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t mean it.
There is no doubt among PVV members: “When I hear that he wants to govern, I think: he really wants that,” says one of them, a PVV member who remembers the Rutte I toleration cabinet and the collapsed negotiations in the Catshuis. still remembers well. Die Wilders, says this source, was “dead serious” until the last moment, even though the cabinet eventually fell – in the middle of an economic crisis.
As a tolerating partner of VVD and CDA, Wilders showed between 2010 and 2012 that he could really make concessions. He dropped the only breaking point in his campaign, no increase in the state pension age, one day after the elections. Rutte I started with 18 billion in announced cuts. The PVV also supported that.
Things only went wrong when, in the spring of 2012, in the Catshuis, Wilders did not want to sign for the additional cuts that VVD and CDA had in mind. The cabinet clapped; his interlocutors, especially Rutte, would blame Wilders for years to come for having ‘run away’. But Rutte is no longer there and Yesilgöz never brings it up.
Golden carriage
Also not unimportant: in terms of content, the other right-wing parties have moved towards him in the past ten years. The VVD’s hard line on asylum policy. Omtzigt’s plea for a target number to reduce immigration and investigate European opt-outs. The BBB asylum maximum. The PVV says: if it worked in 2010 despite all the differences with CDA and VVD, why shouldn’t it be possible now with parties like VVD, BBB and NSC?
It is not the only way in which Wilders stands out less sharply in the political landscape, despite his radical program. He recently received a ‘silver carriage’, the reward for 25 years of membership of the House of Representatives. Soon, when SGP star Kees van der Staaij leaves Parliament in December, he will be the nestor of parliament.
And Wilders is by no means the only PVV member with experience. In the new House, seven of the eight most experienced MPs are probably PVV members. There are parliamentary committees where the PVV members are the best MPs to contact if you want to know how it works, who is who, which files you need to know. In Flevoland the party is again in control, so far without any problems.
Little attention is paid to the cracks. The PVV lost two experienced MPs this year. Lilian Helder switched to the BBB, Harm Beertema left the candidate list out of dissatisfaction with his place and announced this week that he also votes BBB. Wilders hardly gets questions about it.
For the block
The fact is that Wilders’ strategy is already putting both Yesilgöz and Omtzigt in a bind. Every barricade for cooperation that they put up is expertly broken down by Wilders.
What makes the decision difficult for the VVD is this: according to voter research, a majority of the VVD supporters want to do business with the PVV, but a substantial minority absolutely does not. Yesilgöz must deftly try to get through the campaign without alienating either group.
Until now, Omtzigt has been more explicit in his rejection. When asked, he explicitly excludes the PVV because the PVV program goes against the rule of law. The party was also not in the right-wing club parties that Omtzigt recently suggested as a possible coalition. But NSC voters are also divided. A majority is open to a coalition with the PVV, while a serious minority is against it. For example, his supporters include many former D66 voters.
Wilders remained cool under Omtzigt’s rejection. “His voters also want it, but I will still have to convince him,” he said News hour. In another interview, with Nu.nl, he pointed out that the NSC election manifesto had also not emerged unscathed from a rule of law test.
And what does he think of that supposed mildness? Bee News hour Wilders called it “a stamp” that has been stuck on him. Not that that was a problem. “I don’t know what exactly I owed that to, but let me use it to my advantage.”
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