London’s EU-friendly Financial Times, aka the Brussels Pravda, is the daily compulsory reading for Eurocrats and preens itself with its self-image as the sober voice of insight and wisdom on matters European. So it was that its view of what was likely to happen in the Netherlands’ 22 November elections was studied closely –especially as the normally politically boring Dutch have been showing unusual signs of bolshiness of late, notably their farmers’ rebellion against EU climate rules that threatened one of the world’s most productive and efficient food producers.

FT readers were soothingly reassured by columnist Simon Kuper, a journalist of Dutch origin, sold as the paper’s in-house Netherlands guru. The elections were ‘tapping into a mood for dry moderation… the Dutch don’t do wild political leaps. Not like certain countries I could mention’, Kuper told readers. With opinion polls pointing to yet another soggy centre-left coalition, on election night international journalists gathered at the headquarters of the wrong party – outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s misnamed People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). Had things gone according to the script, the following day’s mainstream media would have given triumphant coverage of the sensible Dutch bucking Europe’s recent right-wing populist trend.

The BBC made it clear what they thought of the election result: about sixty-seconds coverage on the flagship 6pm television news, squeezed in at the end between a much longer report on the reforming of 1990s band Girls Aloud and the weather.

Europe’s right is on the advance almost everywhere. But Geert Wilders’ rise has been especially spectacular. The result of the Dutch election is like Pauline Hanson suddenly coming into play as Australia’s possible next prime minister. Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) two years ago won 11 per cent of the vote and 17 seats in the 150-seat parliament. This time he more than doubled that to 24 per cent and 37 seats – more than any other party and no mean feat in the Dutch proportional representation system with its huge number of parties which can realistically win parliamentary seats.

A number of factors produced the result and the most obvious was a backlash to mass immigration and the radical Islam it has imported, Wilders’ central focus for twenty-five years. The issue of out-of-control immigration resonates especially in the Netherlands because it’s so crowded.  Europe’s most densely-populated country (other than the micro-states), close to eighteen million people live in a space less than half the size of Tasmania. Last year net immigration was a record 224,000. Since 2018, an extra 600,000 people have been added to the population. A very large number of Dutch understandably believe the country is full. Particular concerns include asylum-seekers being given housing priority and the very high correlation between crime and non-Western immigrants. The post-7 October wild anti-Israel rallies highlighting Muslim extremism have fed into the backlash.

Mark Rutte, prime minister since 2010, presents himself as a common-sense conservative but has done nothing to curb the immigration tidal wave on his watch.  Famously slippery, he told migrants before the 2017 elections to ‘act normal or leave’, a message clearly aimed at stealing voters from Wilders – and never repeated once he was safely back in office. Generally indistinguishable from the left on ‘progressive’ issues, Rutte won kudos in woke circles for example by threatening to ‘bring Hungary to its knees’ over Budapest’s laws banning the promotion of homosexuality and transgenderism in schools – measures most Dutch would probably agree with.

In addition to the backlash against mass immigration, a big factor in Wilders’ triumph was rising voter hostility to the ostensibly centrist Rutte government’s extreme green agenda. Earlier this year it meekly went along with EU directives that Dutch nitrogen emissions needed to be halved by 2030. That meant ordering a reduction of farm livestock by a third and the compulsory acquisition of hundreds of farms, which would be closed down.

A farmers’ protest party, the Farmer-Citizens Movement (BBB), came out of nowhere to become the largest party in parliament’s upper house. Wilders has said he would reverse all net-zero measures and withdraw from the UN Climate Agreement.

Despite Wilders’ big election win, it’s uncertain he’ll be able to form government. To persuade other parties to join him, he’s dropped some of his anti-Islam policies (banning the Koran, mosques, Islamic schools) and, recognising probable majority Dutch support for EU membership, the idea of a ‘Nexit’ referendum. Rutte’s ostensibly conservative VVD came third in the election with 24 seats. The party has ruled out forming government with Wilders but hasn’t ruled out providing informal parliamentary support. The Dutch political and bureaucratic establishment, most of the media and the EU will do everything in their power to deter it from helping Wilders to take power. The outcome could be similar to those following recent elections in Spain and Poland where the main conservative parties emerged as the largest but failed to secure enough other parliamentary supporters to form government.

Even if Wilders doesn’t become the next Prime Minister, the Dutch have become yet another country underlining Europe’s political move to the right. Over the past two years, anti-immigration conservatives have humbled the left and have taken or retained power across the Continent – in Italy, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Switzerland, Hungary, Slovakia and Denmark (the last probably Europe’s toughest anti-immigration government, even though it’s led by politically cross-dressing Social Democrats).

Almost everywhere but Britain, right-wing pro-strong-borders parties are the largest or are steadily increasing support. The French are having doubts about their re-election last year of Macron – 55 per cent have told one poll they’d now vote for Le Pen.  And in Germany, the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) now consistently shows up in polls as the country’s second-most popular party, attracting around 22 per cent support, well ahead of the ruling Social Democrats and Greens.

With Europe seemingly incapable of or unwilling to stop mass illegal immigration, voters will continue to support politicians committed to doing something about it. Simultaneously they seem to be increasingly worried about the other big threat to the Western way of life, green extremism.  While politics rarely moves in straight lines, these twin threats should continue to favour Europe’s credibly conservative political forces.