“Cordon sanitaire” coalitions tend to break apart when one wing finds out that it’s politically expedient. If the right-wing can’t foresee being able to form a government coalition without PVV, Wilders will be normalized pretty quickly. (Or his successor will.)
It happened in Norway in '05 with FRP, who is now in government. It’s starting in Sweden with SD. I hope the dutch have the constitution of faith to maintain their staunch opposition to PVV for longer than we Scandinavians did.
AIUI, Wilders’ PVV did have a “tolerance agreement” with the outgoing government, without nominating ministers and actually taking any responsibility.
That was the previous government, which served between 2010 and 2012. PVV supported a minority government of CDA and VVD - Both parties have stated they would not work with Wilders again.
Well, who says Mark Rutte belongs to the Liberal Party? He’s a center-righter, a fiscal conservative with moderate views on social issues with hardline on criminal immigrants, but he wasn’t the anti-Muslim zealot that Geert Wilders was.
That’s the predominant meaning of liberalism in continental Europe - pro-business and personal liberty, implicitly anti-clerical (as opposed to the various forms of Christian Democracy on the one hand and Social Democracy or Socialism on the other). Rutte’s VVD is akin to the Free Democrats in Germany, both currently tacking to the right where issues of social cohesion and integration are felt to be challenged by Islamic values and practice. More socially progressive liberals in the Netherlands have D66 (more akin to the British Liberal Party as it was in the 60s-80s).
“Liberal” in the American sense tends to mean a more statist approach that in Europe are more commonly found in social democratic or socialist parties.
Almost 4 months later, there’s still no coalition in the Netherlands.
From The Economist Espresso: Gut feeling: Dutch politics
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