Far-right populist wins Dutch election

Geert Wilders has been lying in wait for decades to govern the Netherlands with his uncompromising far-right agenda, a goal that could at last  be within his reach. Running on an anti-EU/anti-immigration slate Wilders’s Freedom party (PVV) battered all predictions to pick up 37 of the 150 seats at The Hague – leaving the outgoing conservative prime minister, Mark Rutte’s VVD party (24 seats) and a joint Labour/ Green ticket (25 seats) in its wake. It’s a result that has sent shockwaves across Europe – particularly Wilders’s pledge for a “Nexit” ballot ahead of European parliament elections next summer. The caveat: he needs the other top parties onside if he wants a majority. That has already meant a softening of his vociferous anti-Islam views, but on immigration and the EU there appears to be little room to budge. After his victory, Wilders told his supporters: “The Netherlands will be returned to the Dutch, the asylum tsunami and migration will be curbed”. Rutte’s replacement leader of the VVD, the Turkish-born former refugee Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, said there are “major lessons” to be learnt from the results but added her party would not join a government with Wilders as prime minister. Months of negotiations lie ahead.