What the commentators said

Politicians and media pundits are hailing the Dutch election as a defeat for an “anti-islam candidate”, said Basit Mahmood in The Independent. But as a Muslim, I’m certainly not celebrating. Why would I be pleased when a party leader who openly advocates banning the Koran and all Muslim immigration manages to take second place in a national poll? Not so long ago, that would have been seen as a “total shock”. Worse, the rise of the far-right has led to a “race to the bottom” in anti-immigrant rhetoric, persuading Rutte and other supposedly liberal politicians to pursue votes through vicious identity politics. For proof, just look at Rutte’s recent open letter to the Dutch public, said Robert Hardman in the Daily Mail. Immigrants, he suggested, must “behave normally or go away”. Or consider the manifesto pledge from the rival Christian Democrats to make all Dutch school children start the day by singing the national anthem. “If this stuff had been peddled by Mr Trump, there would have been howls of liberal anguish.” Now it’s part of “mainstream Dutch political discourse”.

To focus on the Wilders effect is to miss the bigger story, said Joris Luyendijk on Aljazeera.com. As voters head for the political extremes, we are seeing the disintegration of the big centrist parties that have dominated the politics of Northern Europe since the Second World War. In the 1980s, the Dutch Labour Party and the Christian Democrats between them controlled twothirds of the vote; in the latest election, they could manage less than a third. And as the old behemoths lose their dominance, a dangerous fragmentation is becoming “the norm”, said Cas Mudde in The New York Times. In recent years, both Greece and Spain have been forced to hold second elections after parliaments packed with smaller parties failed to agree on governing coalitions. The Netherlands, where the new parliament will have 13 parties, is just the latest example of a trend that will make effective governance “increasingly impossible”.