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By Toby Sterling
VOLENDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) – The Dutch fishing village of Volendam hardly seems like a hotbed of discontent: tidy, prosperous, little crime or unemployment. Yet a third of its voters are likely to back anti-immigrant nationalist Geert Wilders in the March 15 general election.
His appeal highlights a paradox that is challenging the status quo in Western democracies and fraying the European Union: voters are spurning the mainstream in favour of anti-establishment populism in times of economic wellbeing.
The trend is especially striking in the Netherlands, where the economy is set to be the best performer in the euro zone this year and the people consistently rank near the top of global measurements of happiness and material comfort.
Dutch anti-establishment sentiment is “first and foremost about culture and identity and less about economics”, said Sarah de Lange, a University of Amsterdam political scientist studying the rise of far-right parties in the EU.
It echoes the dissatisfaction that fuelled Britain’s vote to quit the EU and Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president, and the Dutch vote looks like the next chapter of the populist backlash, even if Wilders does not win big enough to gain power.
Polls show Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) will more than double its seats in parliament to 26, almost even with Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s conservatives who stand to tumble from 41 to 27, with his coalition partner Labour plunging to 14 from 38.
But because centrist parties rule out any alliance with Wilders, he will probably end up in the opposition again.
Still, he has already succeeded in pushing mainstream politics toward the hard right, with centrist parties now endorsing an immigration ban.
Anger at pro-EU metropolitan political elites over years of liberal immigration policy is a major driver of Wilders’ appeal.
Non-Western immigrants comprised 7.5 percent of the Dutch population in 1996, and that figure rose to 12.1 by 2015, according to Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Around five percent of the population of 17 million is now Muslim.
Categories: Europe, Europe and Australia, European Union, Netherlands, The Muslim Times