On the same day that the Dutch went to the polls my teenage daughter went to Strasbourg on a school trip. Once in the EU parliament she and her classmates were given a guided tour by a French MEP; she was charming, by all account, a member of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.

My daughter’s class had their photo taken as a memento of the visit and underneath it was captioned: ‘Europe is important because, together, we can protect our way of life’.

Her class outing was part of an initiative organised by Together.eu, whose slogan is ‘For democracy’. Their mission statement explains that they are ‘dedicated to getting as many people as possible involved in the democratic life of Europe.’

Surely then they would have been satisfied with the turnout in the Dutch elections, where 78 per cent of the electorate cast a vote. Then again, perhaps not, given that the winner in a sensational result was Geert Wilders of the Party for Freedom (PVV).

Suddenly democracy has lost some of its appeal. Iratxe Garcia, the president of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats commiserated with the beaten left-wing candidate, Frans Timmermans, and vowed that ‘we will stand firm and united to defend our values against the far right and its normalisation.’

Timmermans is the incarnation of the grey Brussels bureaucrat. For nine years the 62-year-old served as vice-president of the European Commission, the man who more than any other has championed the Europe’s Green Deal. Two years ago Timmermans described Greta Thunberg, the Swedish environmental radical, as a ‘hero’ for her environmental activism.

On the other great issue of our times, mass immigration, he’s on record stating that Europe is the ‘continent of solidarity, and our doors will remain open for those in need of protection… migration is and will be a permanent feature of our life.’

In a speech in Brussels almost exactly seven years ago Timmermans rubbished the idea that Europe could do anything about protecting its borders: ‘No matter what people may want you to believe: there is no sea wide enough, no fence high enough, to prevent people from coming if desperation takes a hold.’

Since Timmermans uttered those words, Europe has begun what the Guardian described in an editorial September as a ‘drift rightwards’.

Not surprisingly the Guardian has not digested Wilders’ victory well. In a profile of the man it described as ‘the Dutch far-right figurehead’, it referenced some of his more objectionable comments, such as calling Moroccans ‘scum’ and his description of Islam as ‘an ideology of a retarded culture’. However, the paper also alluded to why Wilders made this remark, prompted by the brutal murder in 2004 of Theo van Gogh. The documentary maker was slain by an Islamist because he made a film that criticised the treatment of women in Islam. In the immediate aftermath of the killing the Guardian reported from Holland that ‘even politicians on the left spoke last week of ‘harsh truths’ on immigration.’

They may have spoken ‘harsh truths’ but that was as far as it went. Nothing was done to check uncontrolled immigration to either Holland or Europe. On the contrary, from 2011 onwards the number of migrants accelerated, from 4,450 illegal border crossings on the Central Mediterranean route in 2010 to 181,459 six years later.

Instead of addressing this phenomenon, the political and cultural left embraced mass immigration and became increasingly intolerant of those who raised objections, branding them ‘far-right’, ‘fascist’ and ‘Islamophobic’.

In Thursday’s profile of Wilders, the Guardian said that while he had recently toned down some of his opinions about Islam he had still campaigned on ‘extreme’ issues, among which were ‘restoring Dutch border control, detaining and deporting illegal immigrants’. Is border control ‘extreme’?

One of the first European politicians to congratulate Wilders was Marine Le Pen in France. She told a radio interviewer that the Dutch people had spoken, and their message was that they ‘want us to master immigration, which is seen…as massive and totally anarchic today.’

The EU boasts to visiting schoolchildren that it ‘protects our way of life’ but the reality is it does no such thing. Protecting a way of life, such as Europe’s, means controlling the borders to ensure that terrorists and extremists don’t enter with evil intentions. This has not happened.

As I wrote in January ‘Europe’s leaders are failing in their duty to keep people safe’. Since those words, there have been appalling atrocities in Annecy, Brussels and Arras, all perpetrated by non-Europeans.

That is why Geert Wilders won the Dutch election; it explains why Giorgia Meloni is Prime Minister of Italy, and Marine Le Pen has 88 MPs in the French Assembly. Their voters aren’t fascists; they’re fearful about what the future holds.