When the policy document of the new coalition government in the Netherlands was published a month ago, I predicted that we would be in for a bumpy ride.

Now that names are being put to the Cabinet posts, my prediction is becoming a dead certainty.

The first bump in the road was happily experienced by Wilders himself. He had proposed his PVV party member Gidi Markuszower for the post of Minister of Asylum and Migration, but the Dutch Security Service has said that Markuszower has failed his security check, and so Wilders has had to withdraw his nomination and has proposed an alternative candidate.

Markuszower, by his past public pronouncements, comes across as a particularly nasty piece of work who views those seeking asylum as merely “fortune seekers” and has held forth tirades against them in parliament e.g. the “ordinary Dutch man and woman” is being “replaced” by asylum seekers and that the current policy on asylum is “a crime against the people” and those responsible for it must face a parliamentary tribunal. He is on record as saying:

 ‘Het is walgelijk dat Nederlanders door de eigen overheid worden vertrapt, maar dat gelukszoekers uit Afrika en achterlijke Midden-Oosterse zandbaklanden door diezelfde overheid worden vertroeteld.’

‘De jungle van Afrika komt massaal hiernaartoe.’

‘We hebben te maken met roedels van zogenaamde ‘bontkraagjes’, groepen van jongeren die hier eigenlijk niet thuishoren.’

‘Ze trappen op het hoofd en beuken en rossen door. Hun slachtoffers kiezen ze zorgvuldig uit, vaak Nederlandse kinderen dus, die hier wél thuishoren. Nederland is van ons, maar de straat is inmiddels van hen. Dit is gewelddadig racisme, waarbij autochtone jongeren in elkaar worden gemept door allochtoon tuig.’

In translation:

“It is disgusting that Dutch people are trampled on by their own government, but that fortune seekers from Africa and backward Middle Eastern sandbox countries are pampered by the same government.”

“The jungles of Africa are coming here en masse.”

“We are dealing with packs of so-called ‘fur collars’ [a derogatory term for male youngsters of supposed Moroccan background], groups of young people who do not actually belong here.”

‘They kick on the head and keep pounding and pounding. They carefully choose their victims, often Dutch children, who do belong here. The Netherlands is ours, but the street is now theirs. This is violent racism, where native young people are beaten up by immigrant scum.’

Wilders has now proposed Marjolein Faber for the post, and she’s not much of an improvement in my eyes: in the First Chamber (the Senate) she has accused the current cabinet of treason because of their policies on mass immigration.

Then we have gems such as Reinette Klever who is to be the Minister for Foreign Trade and Foreign Aid. Presumably she’s been chosen because she wants to scrap all Foreign Aid. She’s written that asylum seekers bring “TB, hepatitus, polio, cholera, typhoid and other exotic diseases with them”. She left politics in 2017 to work in her husband’s business, but then since 2022 has popped up as a TV-commentator in the broadcaster Ongehoord Nederland (Unheard Netherlands) – the Dutch equivalent of Fox News or GB News – so you can imagine what that’s like…

Wilders claims that:

‘Nederland moet een land worden waar u zich weer thuis voelt, een land waar u een goede boterham verdient zonder te veel belasting te betalen, een land waar u ’s avonds veilig over straat kunt zonder beroofd te worden, een land waar de ouderen en de gehandicapten het goed hebben.’

‘The Netherlands must become a country where you feel at home again, a country where you earn a good living without paying too much tax, a country where you can walk safely on the streets at night without being robbed, a country where the elderly and the disabled are doing well.’

Laudable aims, Mr. Wilders, but the end does not justify your means to achieve it.

The real giveaway is that phrase “where you feel at home again” – in other words, white, Christian, and not from any other ethnic or religious background or country. As I said last month: this is not in my name, Mr. Wilders.

An excellent piece by Lewis Goodall.

I feel very uneasy about developments at the moment. It’s as though Dutch society is like the frog sitting in water that is slowly being brought to boiling point.

When I first came to the Netherlands in 1983, the country had a reputation for tolerance, an openness and a “live and let live” attitude to life. Over the years, attitudes have hardened and polarisation increased to the point where I scarcely recognise the country I first encountered.

We’ve just had a general election, and to my utter dismay, the far-right populist party of Geert Wilders has gained the most seats in the Dutch parliament. This is the man who has called Moroccans “scum” and whose manifesto proposes a ban on Islamic schools, mosques and the Qur’an, a ban on the wearing of headscarves in government buildings, and tight immigration and border controls. These include restoring Dutch border controls, detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, and reintroducing work permits for intra-EU workers. He is no supporter of the EU. The icing on the cake is that he appears to also be a climate change denier who ignores climate problems.

It remains to be seen whether he can persuade other parties to join him and form a coalition government with sufficient majority to govern. If he does, then it will be a right-wing coalition. The future does not look bright for tolerance and social solidarity in the Netherlands.

I despair.