Wilders plans for ‘patriotic spring’ amid Dutch chaos

Poll frontrunner leads far-Right drive for power with attack on ‘Moroccan scum’

“patriotic spring” ahead of elections in France and Germany later in the year, where far-Right parties are already gaining ground.

“What you see happening now is what we saw happening after Brexit,” Mr Wilders said. “Despite all the hate and fear-mongering of the elite, both in Britain and in Brussels, the people took their fate in their own hands.”

His rivals are just as conscious that the world’s eyes are turned on their country and are determined to deny the hard-Right a victory.

“People are very much aware that it’s not just a national election – it is part of a series of international elections where right-wing populists try to challenge the ruling parties,” Michiel Servaes, a Labour MP who holds the party’s foreign affairs brief, told “I – and I hope lots of people in the Netherlands – realise how important this election is. It is for us to stop this development.”

Mr Wilders has been campaigning on an anti-immigration platform for more than a decade, but his support has leapt in the wake of the refugee crisis. When he was convicted last December of inciting racial discrimination and insulting Moroccans, still more voters flocked to his party.

Immigration has long been a political issue in Holland. Far-Right politicians have exploited concerns about the families of “guest workers” from Turkey and Morocco who settled in the country from the 1960s. In 2015, Holland accepted nearly 57,000 migrants. Mr Rutte has responded to support for Mr Wilders by publishing an open letter warning migrants to “be normal or be gone”.

Mr Wilders’s plans to close all mosques, shut down the asylum system and ban headscarves at public functions have proved popular with white working-class voters, who the Geert Wilders went walkabout to wild acclaim as he launched his poll campaign in Spijkenisse. But despite the fevered support, he is likely to be blocked from becoming prime minister party dubs “Henk and Ingrid”. He has also appealed to voters who feel they have not shared in the benefits of the economic recovery by pledging more generous welfare payments and to stage a “Nexit” from the European Union.

Mr Wilders called Spijkenisse his party’s spiritual “hometown”. Unemployment is higher than the national average and lengthy queues form in snack bars on payday. The Party for Freedom won local elections here in 2015 and took to the town’s streets last year for a stunt handing out “anti-refugee resistance spray”.

As Mr Wilders moved about the square, residents leaned out of windows to film the moment and fans chanted “Wilders! Wilders! Wilders!” Menno Krikken, a 32-year-old civil servant, was there to support the man he regards as a “visionary”. “One in five people in this city votes for Mr Wilders,” he said. “I like his standpoint on the European Union and against religious extremism. Mr Wilders is very outspoken and that’s why he was prosecuted. I don’t think he stepped over the line.”

Marianne Hopkins, a Dutchwoman from an ethnic minority background, was rather more concise. “I think Mr Wilders is a pop star,” she said simply.

Despite such endorsement, there is little realistic prospect that Mr Wilders will become prime minister. Although polls put his party in the lead, it is only expected to win up to 27 seats in parliament, far short of the 76 needed to form a government. Other parties have emphatically refused to form a coalition with Mr Wilders, raising the prospect that the leader of the largest party in parliament could be prevented from running the country for the first time since 1977.

Analysts instead expect Mr Wilders to remain in opposition while a coalition of four or more of the 28 parties on the ballot forms a government. ‘It raises the prospect that the leader of the largest party in the Dutch parliament could be prevented from running the country for the first time since 1977’

Maurice de Hond, a pollster, said such a result would risk compounding the impression among Mr Wilders’s voters that they have been betrayed by the establishment.

“If you are really a democrat and really want to find a solution for the future, you need to find a way where Wilders’s voters are represented in one way or another,” he said.

In Spijkenisse, some Party for Freedom supporters are already bracing themselves for just such an outcome.

As his hero slipped back into his chauffeur-driven car, Stefan de Jong, a 32-year-old truck driver, conceded that he would “find it difficult to make a government as other parties don’t want to work with him”.

“If that happens, it will be very bad as so many people support him,” he said.

“It puts democracy in danger.”