{"id":4778,"date":"2017-05-16T09:04:49","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T07:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4778"},"modified":"2017-05-16T09:11:02","modified_gmt":"2017-05-16T07:11:02","slug":"populism-not-as-rejected-as-previously-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/4778\/","title":{"rendered":"Populism not as rejected as previously thought"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone remember the election in The Netherlands last March, after which we were told the Dutch people rejected \u201cthe wrong kind of populism\u201d?\u00a0Here’s<\/a> what I said afterwards:<\/p>\n

For sure, Geert Wilders didn\u2019t win outright, and nor did his Freedom Party even come close to doing so, but they came second with a seat count of 20 up from 15, which is an increase of a third. The mistake I think people like Hollande and Merkel, and possibly even Rutte, are making is believing the policies of the Freedom Party have been overwhelmingly rejected and can safely be ignored from hereon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, whaddya know<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Negotiations to form the next Dutch government have collapsed as the four parties involved were unable to decide what to do about migration.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s centre-right VVD party had sought to strike a deal with the liberal D66, the Christian Democrats and the Green-Left.<\/p>\n

The talks had been ongoing for 61 days since an election in March.<\/p>\n

The Green-Left support open borders, while the other three want stricter controls.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That would be the Green-Left who came 5th in the election and who secured some percentage of their votes because their leader,\u00a0Jesse Klaver, is good looking. Therein lies the problem of coalition governments, the lunatics on the fringe get to play kingmaker.<\/p>\n

The minister who had been tasked with forming the new government will submit a report to parliament before the members discuss how to proceed.<\/p>\n

Geert Wilders, the leader of the anti-EU, anti-Islam Freedom Party, welcomed the news, saying he was ready to talk.<\/p>\n

His party came second in the polls.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Angela Merkel was unavailable for comment, possibly because Macron won’t let her out of his sight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone remember the election in The Netherlands last March, after which we were told the Dutch people rejected \u201cthe wrong kind of populism\u201d?\u00a0Here’s what I said afterwards: For sure, Geert Wilders didn\u2019t win outright, and nor did his Freedom Party … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,96],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4778"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4778"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4781,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4778\/revisions\/4781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}