Lezioni per i liberali: cosa può insegnare al mondo la vittoria dei progressisti olandesi sul populismo?

Perhaps the beginning of the end of extreme right-wing populism?

IMHO not much. I believe the Liberals did not win because they convinced the public of being better, but because the far-rightnin government proved to suck.

We have seen this situation play out before in Austria. At least two times, even (Schüssel and Kurz governments). Both times the Far-right came back because people were still disillusioned with the establishment, but forgot how much the far-right sucked 4,8,12 years ago.

That’s a very different situation, from say, Obama, who managed to convince people to buy into *his* story, not just move away from his competitors’ story. Similarly, I would argue the Danish Social Democrats are a better example of lib success, because they convinced people of their proposals, not just got voters that where saddened by recent performance of the far-right.

I am happy for the Dutch, don’t get me wrong, I just doubt there are many lessons to learn from them for liberals elsewhere in Europe.

Edit: I am using Liberal as code for “Opposition to Illiberals” here. So Libs, Social Democrats, Greens etc

I definitely think some centre-left parties should take particular notes of their rhetoric and issues. For one in particular, please talk about housing more.

But even so, the far right did not lose any strength despite the solid campaign of D66 *and* far right being in power and embarrassing itself. Europeans seem to want far right *really badly*, and touch the stove *really* hard, even as we can see Americans doing it, and now we saw them a year after heavily pivoting back from it, meaning they already learned their lesson quite a bit. How hard are we going to have to touch the stove, and why do we have to in the first place given we have eyes, i wonder?

I love the headlines, which try to create a false opposition between progressives and populism. To have absolutely no political argument 😁

The only real argument: “You’re a progressive party facing off against far-right populists? Find yourself a fit, youthful leader with a big smile who oozes optimism and can-do spirit, and is prepared to stress policy overlaps, rather than differences, with potential allies. “ 

Not populism at all, no no.

The only lesson for most other countries is: Implement proportional representation that encourages a multi party system with coalitions.

Under a First Past The Post system like the UK the PVV would be the government. Allowing people to vote for the party they genuinely believe in rather than tactically picking between the only two parties who can win is much more democratic. The need for coalitions this creates can be annoying, but results in the government with the most consensus. Both things result in better, if slower, governance that better represents the whole nation.

The outgoing populist right government was totally neutered and unable to achieve any real change, because they could not generate enough consensus to pass anything. They couldn’t even agree with each other. This is a good thing and better than reactionary swings from left to right where parties just undo whatever the last winner did.

This is also a protection against populist autocrats, who once elected will try to undo the democracy and rule of law. Which is something Europe definitely needs.

Populism isn’t inherently right wing

The party had to move to the centre/right on certain topics to appeal to a broader audience. Not quite the Progressive win.

The only lesson here is about political fragmentation

The right got 61% of the vote. That includes 1/3rd of the vote for the populist right (PVV, FvD, Ja21, BBB, 50PLUS) if you define populist right as social-cultural right (anti-diversity, anti-Europe, glorifying a mythical past) but economically whatever polls well. You can’t call this a progressive victory over populism.

The left has been fragmented for decades now, and de-fragmented a little because the unpopular merger of Labor and Greens effectively disbanded labor. There was a lot of strategic voting for D66 on the left this time, allowing them to become the largest party even when “the left” as a whole had one of its worst election results ever.

There is no path to a stable coalition, I expect new elections soon.

Well, it is yet to be seen what kind of government gets formed there.

But in general, I hope people in Europe and rest of the world see the truth beyond populism and populist parties, which is, most of the populist parties have 0 governance experience. It is easy to shout popular slogans on rallies and in the parliament but when they are given the reigns to lead, their brains shut down.

Eh, wait. There hardly is a liberal victory. Far right populists, spread over four different parties, have a grand total of 46 seats out of 150. Combined with the religious extremists of SGP (3 seats) that is almost a third of all the seats.

In a normal working democracy you would expect the other two thirds to join forces, but not in the Netherlands. The conservative liberals – who during the past 20 years or so were the largest parties and were always in power – refuse to work with Labour, and only want to join a government with far right extremists. So after getting all power, abusing it to incredible heights (look up tax benefit scandal if you haven’t heard of it, or the housing crisis) and participating in an extremely dysfunctional far-right government (which fell quickly), they STILL want to run the country together with populists that spout hate speech (except this time round with JA21 rather than with PVV ad BBB last time) thus effectively blocking all forms of good governance.

If the conservative liberals (just a few seats less than the “victorious” social liberals) manage to have it their way, we will get a government made up of social liberals, conservative liberals, christian democrats and populists.

That is a nightmare scenario because:

– The new populist party JA21 consists of political adventurers tangled up in the infighting of numerous other, mostly populist, parties. Chances are half the elected members will have joined other parties or made their own within a year.

– The proposed government does not even have a majority. So they will need a fifth party, or seek support from others every time (the Netherlands does not have a history of minority governments – they never work).

– The other three parties in such a government are normally against hate or discrimination and sort of follow the rule of law (admittedly, the conservative liberals appear to be leaving that path). Fights between especially the largest government party and the populist party can be expected.

If this government is formed, I give it another year before it collapses. We’ll have another year of chaos and no actual working government. The housing crisis will get worse, nothing will get done.

Now if the conservative liberals give up their refusal to work with Labour, we’ll get a social liberal / conservative liberal / labour / christian democrat government. That could work on paper, because those are (or were) all traditional democratic parties with a long history of cooperating with each other. But if the conservative liberals get in sulkingly and will just pry for a reason to blow it up and blame it on the rest, it is not going to be helpful either.

tl;dr One third of the seats to far right populists, Conservative party needed for a stable government refusing to form a stable government, so no real victory of liberals over populists at all.

That the English too have forgotten the meaning of the word liberal?

absolutely nothing because there was no shift to progressives they just had luck with how votes were distributed among other parties