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I look forward to election reruns

After all, can’t be having the wrong result now, can we?

The victory of the farmers’ party in the Dutch provincial elections last week was even greater than expected. With nearly 20 per cent of the vote, it is now the biggest party in every one of the 12 Dutch provinces. The Netherlands is the second-biggest food exporter in the world, so the success of a party representing rural interests may not seem surprising – but this vote was a revolt against environmental regulation.

19 thoughts on “I look forward to election reruns”

  1. They’ll just invent some charge and arrest the leaders,like they did with that Wilders bloke.

    I remember that the BBC did a hatchet job on Geert a few years ago. The centrepiece was an accusatiin that he supported Israel. Oh how Nazi of him !

  2. The party’s breakthrough is down to the nitrogen crisis.

    Fuck off mate. There is no nitrogen crisis. And cows farting does not imperil Dutch nature reserves.

    EU (and UK) environmental policy increasingly resembles that of the Xhosas who slaughtered all their cattle in the 1850s as a gift to the gods in order to secure better weather. They even did this on the urging of a teenage girl, an uncanny similarity.

  3. The success of the farmers party reminds me of the success of the Brexit Referendum. Perhaps as more and more regulation is imposed from the top down more and more people are going to find ways to resist it. Who, amongst the Elite, knew?

  4. The Meissen Bison

    …the success of a party representing rural interests may not seem surprising – but this vote was a revolt against environmental regulation.

    The Telegraph in its sad journalistic decline seems to register astonishment that rural interests oppose environmental regulation when farmers’ livelihoods are threatened. Zounds!

  5. Quite frankly this is all Mark Rutte’s fault. The man has gone from a demagogue to a tyrant based upon little more than EU-climate-related agri-bollocks.

    The problem was that under PR it’s hard to get rid of cockroaches like him, the only way is exactly how it’s being done, form a new untainted party and dogpile it until they have, if not a majority, then are at least the largest party so that they can block this nonsense that has turned the Netherlands from a fairly happy little place to a madhouse.

    I bet he’s stopped bicycling to his office in the morning though. Genuine fear of being mobbed and lynched in the streets will do that to you.

  6. EU and UK policy is more Maoist, MC.

    Mao knew all about the starvation, abuse and cannibalism of the Cultural Revolution, and he thought it was great.

  7. The problem was that under PR it’s hard to get rid of cockroaches like him

    Like all systems it is a mix. In this instance, it is easier to get a new party into a position of real power, unlike our system. On the downside, as you say, it is difficult to unelect individuals. Under PR, I suspect that Reform would perform similarly at our next election. As it is, all we can hope for is that they devastate the Conservative vote.

  8. These are senate elections, so presumably the aim is to block legislation generated by the coalition in the senate rather than seize the government at this stage, though there is a democratic argument that a government which cannot get its legislation through both houses cannot govern (and therefore should resign), I doubt Mark Rutte will acknowledge that interpretation.

    I think it’s more likely that other coalition members see the writing on the wall and withdraw from the coalition, hoping to save themselves by doing a deal with BBB, presumably with the proviso that the governments assault on farms and farmers is ended and Mark Rutte is ousted as both PM and party leader.

    Can’t see it working any other way. The writing is on the wall and the government trying to fight the people is never going to end well. The longer it goes on the more seats the current coalition are going to lose when the inevitable general election is called.

    Mark Rutte might be fighting for what’s left of his political legacy, but the other coalition parties (and even other VVD politicians) might well decide that the Nitrates War is unwinnable and that enough is enough.

  9. I would bet decent money that a re-run would result in a significantly increased voting share for the populists.

    The groundswell is there, and it’s not just about nitrogen. All it ever needs is a decent non-establishment party and people will flock to it. This time round the mainstream got a bloody nose, try it again and it might just be a TKO.

  10. BiS, Ruud Lubbers.
    And dearieme.. Lubbers is the guy who started all this by adopting the UN “sustainable” view for Clogland, and promoting it in the EU. Then the Greens did a runner with it, and look where we are…

  11. @Longrider – “it is difficult to unelect individuals”

    That’s not a feature of PR – it’s a feature of party list systems, which are only one kind of PR. With STV it is very easy to get rid of an individual – much easier than FPTP as you can vote for a different candidate in the same party, so you don’t have to vote for a party you dislike just to get rid of a candidate you dislike.

  12. Yeah, I’m pretty sure if the BBB were to replicate it’s senate success in the legislature then the price of VVD being in the coalition would be that Mark Rutte isn’t involved, even if he remains an elected VVD member of the legislature.

    Only way to do house cleaning whilst he remains an elected member.

    Of course he could do the decent thing and resign from politics, but cockroach’s like Rutte tend not to do that…and you wouldn’t want the bastard to take up an EU job because he’d stab you in the back at every turn like Donald Tusk did with Poland.

    Better out of power completely, but at what price?

  13. the Dutch are not averse to assassinating politicians.

    I am aware. I used to live in Hilversum (working in Dutch TV ratings) where Pim Fortune was murdered.

  14. Hmmm.. the Hatred for Rutte is overrated. “Orange Man Bad” overrated. I thought we learned to treat anything touted by the MSM with the appropriate amount of salt?

    The election results certainly do not show a massive depreciation of Rutte and his party.
    The coalition problems come from the drubbing D’66 and CDA got. Guess who holds the relevant ministries in this mess…

    But do note Groen Links is insistent on pushing the whole Eco-Mess down our collective throats in a none too subtle way, and with PvdA in tow they might just manage.
    That is if there are no surprises when the actual election of the Senate takes place, and, very much if, the PvdA senators chosen will respond amicably to the Groen-Links’ “Heel!” when they inevitably try to push Green Stuff through that way.
    And yes… GL will try to pull that one… Interesting Times..

    As for the Populists.. FvD held the “Votes of Dissatisfaction” so no big surprise there.. most of them went to BBB. And baudet… welll… They actually kept some seats.
    But PVV? Stable.ish.
    JA21, aka “FvD without the Embuggerance of Baudet”? Did pretty well, really.

    If the “Populist” parties stopped bitchslapping each other they’d actually form a significant voice.

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