Politics: Dutch lessons for Farage

By Richard North - October 30, 2025

For an idea of the possible fate of Mr Farage’s Reform UK party, it might be a good idea to look at what is happening in Holland’s general election to Geert Wilders’ “far right” People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (PVV), better known simply as the Freedom Party.

Compared with the UK’s right, Wilders has been to some extent ahead of the game, taking his country by storm in the 2023 Dutch general election, held on 22 November. His party secured 37 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives to become for the first time the largest party in the parliament.

However, Dutch party politics is nothing if not messy and, while Wilders had immediately declared his ambition to become prime minister, it was not to be. Without an outright majority, he was forced into protracted negotiations to form a working coalition.

Talks dragged on for nearly six months, initially collapsing in February 2024, leading Wilders to withdraw his candidacy for premier on 13 March. A final coalition agreement was reached in May 2004, led by independent Dick Schoof, a former intelligence chief, leading a mix of impenetrable acronyms, including the VVD, the NSC and the BBB as well as Wilders’ own party.

This was never going to go anywhere – and it didn’t. The government eventually collapsed in June 2025 over disputes about immigration, leading to a snap election. This was held yesterday, with the results coming in through the night.

Exit polls, however, are spelling trouble for Wilders. The Telegraph is reporting that his dream of becoming prime minister is in tatters after Rob Jetten, the leader of the liberal D66, was given the lead with 27 seats, with the VVD dropping back to 25, beating Wilders into second place.

This is a remarkable turnround for Jetten who has potentially tripled his representation since 2023 and, if the result holds, he will get the first shot at holding coalition talks, with the chance of becoming the Netherlands’ first openly gay prime minister.

To get there, it is possible that all the major parties (VVD, CDA, GL-PvdA, D66) will refuse a coalition with Wilders, explicitly excluding the PVV. Between these parties, they could potentially form a viable coalition of around 76 seats, forcing Wilders into opposition.

Jetten makes no secret of his dislike for Wilders. Says the Telegraph, the 38-year-old cast himself as the “anti-Wilders candidate”, aiming to reclaim the Dutch flag from the far-Right, campaigning on the slogan “It is possible” and delivering strong performances in televised debates.

With a fair wind, we may well be seeing a centrist Jetten cabinet being sworn in by the spring 2026, although there is always the possibility of road-bumps on the way – and the final results have yet to be declared.

With the prospect of the fall of Wilders in sight, the Guardian – as one might imagine – is quivering with excitement, already running an analytical piece headed: “Geert Wilders convinced Dutch voters the far right could run the country. What is their verdict now?”.

Purring with delight, its sub-head tells us: “A failed two-year experiment has lessons for the rest of Europe about the appeal – and the limits – of populism”, as the paper’s associate European editor, Katherine Butler, piles on the agony for Wilders.

“What happens when you put far-right populists in charge?”, she asks by way of an opening, going on to pose the questions: “Entrusted with ministerial responsibilities, can they deliver the radical solutions that they often preach? Or do they, sooner or later, when faced with complex policy dilemmas, end up self-destructing, leaving an even bigger mess in their wake?”.

That, she says, was the question the Dutch voters had to weigh but, even with Jetten’s projected success, she warns that it doesn’t mean that the far right’s “the Netherlands is full” narratives are out of favour.

Butler cites Cas Mudde, a Dutch political scientist who specialises “in political extremism”. He points out that the threat of a firewall around Wilders was not driven by revulsion at his ideology, but by anger at his “immature” posturing and pulling out of government after 11 months.

That is what triggered this week’s general election, Butler says, but his anti-immigrant themes were adopted with gusto as the political centre ground shifted rightward. Even left-wing politicians echoed the scapegoating of refugees during the campaign.

Butler then avers that, on the issues that voters said mattered most to them: housing, healthcare and the asylum system, the experiment with far-right rule was, objectively, a total flop. The PVV had nothing to show.

To support her argument, she calls in aid Armida van Rij, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform thinktank, who declares that: “The liberal-populist-far right coalition failed to address any of these challenges, and in some cases exacerbated them”.

Anger, we are told – including among younger voters – over the national housing shortage helped Wilders to a seismic victory in the last election in 2023 but, two years on the crisis is unsolved, with more than 80,000 people needing homes. It has simply become a bigger stick with which to beat asylum seekers, casually accused of jumping waiting lists.

Koen Vossen, political historian and the author of The Power of Populism: Geert Wilders and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, then takes up the cudgels. He argues that the coalition “did nothing to address the housing crisis”.

The man adds that: “there are no other new laws, reforms or achievements to speak of”, says “You can drive faster than the 100km/h speed limit on a short stretch of highway in the polders. That is the only thing I can think of that they delivered on”.

But here we get some insight which may be directly relevant to Farage. In Vossen’s view, the “firebrand” Wilders is ill-suited to governing. Although he has been a force in Dutch politics for 20 years, his comfort zone is “on the outside screaming in”.

“He lacks an organisation, because he doesn’t want one. He made poor ministerial appointments because he does not trust anyone – he had to cast around for party loyalists but they were amateurs, with no skills or experience”.

One result, according to Patrick Van Oosteron, writing before the election for Bloomberg is that “a rising voice in Dutch politics is capturing part of the country’s far-right base, loosening anti-migration leader Geert Wilders’ grip on voters”.

This is Ingrid Coenradie, hitherto a little-known politician until recently, said to be transforming her tiny JA21 party into a budding conservative force by appealing to voters tired of Wilders’ hardline Freedom Party. She tells Bloomberg: “Over the past few years, people have voted for Geert Wilders, whether out of support or protest. But now you’re seeing people drop out, disappointed”.

Wilders’ Freedom Party has dropped below 17 percent in the latest polls, tumbling down from its 33 percent high in 2024, but the same polls show that JA21 has enough support to help sway coalition talks after yesterday’s election.

The party has done it, we are told, by promising to push law-and-order policies without Wilders’ burn-it-down tactics. JA21 still wants deep migration cuts, for instance, but shuns Wilders’ preferred ban. It’s also willing to partner with a range of groups in the splintered Dutch parliament.

That spells trouble for Wilders, says Van Oosteron. The emergence of a new right could end up with him being sidelined – replaced by a more flexible brand of right-wing politics.

As it is, JA21 is showing nine seats in the exit poll – up from one in the 2023 election – which may have cost Wilders his lead position, as this upstart party provides an alternative route for right-wing politics.

Until earlier this year, Coenradie was actually a Freedom Party minister, serving in a coalition government with Wilders. But only months into her job, Coenradie clashed publicly with him over her proposal to address a prison shortage. She wanted slightly shorter sentences. Wilders wouldn’t budge.

Says Léonie de Jonge, a professor studying far-right politics at the University of Tübingen, “She received enormous praise for contradicting Wilders, which no one else dared to do. In a completely amateurish and incompetent cabinet, she was the only Freedom Party minister who showed any backbone and competence on her portfolio”.

With all this, the inferences for Farage are obvious. With the febrile political situation in the UK, he too might find his party shoehorned into an uneasy coalition, unable to perform effectively. And, displaying some of the same character flaws as Wilders, his inability to deliver could also mean an early election and his displacement by someone better equipped to do the job.

The parallels are by no means exact, but there is enough of a warning there for Farage to need to take note – not that he will.