Geert Wilders collapsed the Dutch government. He wanted power, but had no idea how to govern

The Guardian

a day ago

Earlier this month, Geert Wilders decided he had had enough. 'No signature for our asylum plans. No changes to the coalition agreement. The PVV is leaving the coalition,' he posted on X. After 11 months, he was withdrawing support for the Dutch prime minister Dick Schoof's rightwing cabinet, forcing the Netherlands back to the polls.
The decision put an end to Wilders' far-right Freedom party's (PVV) first spell in power. Following an unexpected victory in the 2023 elections, the PVV joined a government for the first time in its 18-year history – alongside the conservative-liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the centrist New Social Contract (NSC), and the agrarian-populist Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB) – although Wilders's coalition partners did not let him become prime minister. But the promise to drastically reduce immigration and implement a strict asylum policy proved difficult to deliver due to numerous constitutional and legal restrictions.
The Netherlands now faces a familiar question: What is the 61-year-old politician trying to achieve – and how?
Looking solely at his political platform, the answer seems relatively clear. With its emphasis on immigration, national identity, sovereignty, more direct democracy and stricter law enforcement, the PVV is a fairly typical radical rightwing populist party. In the European parliament, the PVV belongs to the Patriots for Europe group, alongside Marine Le Pen's National Rally, Viktor Orbán's Fidesz and Matteo Salvini's League.
Within that circle, Wilders is one of the most prominent and pioneering ideologues, introducing a highly alarmist caricature of Islam as a totalitarian ideology of conquest. 'Walk the streets of western Europe today … and you will often see something resembling a medieval Arab city, full of headscarves and burqas … Mass immigration is rapidly changing our culture and identity. Islam is rising, and I do not want Islam to rise! Islam and freedom are incompatible,' he proclaimed in his keynote speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Budapest in May.
In Wilders' worldview, Israel is the primary defender of western freedom against Islam and therefore deserves unconditional support. 'If Jerusalem falls, Athens, Paris, or Amsterdam are next,' he said in the Dutch parliament last week. 'Western mothers can sleep peacefully because the mothers of Israeli soldiers lie awake.'
Wilders' anti-Islam crusade soon clashed with the Dutch constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion. To join the coalition, he put his most extreme positions 'in the freezer', as he described it – including a ban on the Qur'an and the closure of all mosques. Instead, he focused on curbing asylum migration from Muslim countries, repatriating Syrians and supporting Israeli military actions in Gaza and the West Bank (he consistently refers to the latter as Judea and Samaria). Yet, even in these areas, he faced setbacks. Under pressure from parliament and public opinion, the Dutch foreign minister, Caspar Veldkamp, has recently adopted a slightly more critical stance toward the Israeli government – much to Wilders' displeasure.
In justifying the fall of his cabinet, Wilders mainly blamed resistance from his coalition partners, the bureaucracy, the courts and the media. But the truth is, he also has himself to blame. Nearly 20 years after its launch in February 2006, the PVV is still hardly a political party in the conventional sense. Exploiting a loophole in Dutch electoral law, Wilders chose not to allow any formal members into his party. As a result, neither PVV ministers nor parliamentarians are actual members of the party. Ultimately, he has failed to build and lead a professional political organisation that is capable of governing.
Wilders adopted his party's unusual structure partly out of fear of attracting opportunists and troublemakers. But according to many observers, he is also a deeply suspicious and solitary figure by nature, someone who prefers total control and avoids consultation. His permanent security detail, a result of a fatwa, has likely reinforced these traits and made it even harder to establish a party structure. 'If I wanted to speak to a candidate, it had to happen in a hidden hotel, on the sixth floor, with six policemen in front of my bedroom door,' he once claimed in an interview.
As a result, the PVV remains entirely dependent on Wilders' personal political instincts. While parties such as National Rally, League and Fidesz have large organisations with tens of thousands of members, local chapters, professional offices and well-funded campaign machines, the PVV is little more than Wilders' small, tightly controlled entourage.
When he wants to change direction, there is no party congress or critical internal faction he has to convince. This is an undeniable advantage in today's volatile political landscape, but its cost is high. First, the PVV remains poor. In the Netherlands, only parties with more than 1,000 members qualify for state subsidies. The impact of this underfunding is evident in its amateurish election campaigns, low-quality videos, clumsy communication and a lack of skilled personnel. Second, the party operates in near total opacity. Its hierarchy, finances and candidate selection process are a mystery not only to outsiders – politicians, journalists, lobbyists – but even to its own supporters. As a result, many potential candidates and volunteers shy away. Who is willing to risk their reputation for a career in such a controversial and opaque organisation? Who dares to become a minister or junior minister for a party that revolves entirely around the unpredictable whims of one man?
When Wilders was required to nominate ministers, he discovered he had no capable candidates with administrative experience, an understanding of the Dutch political system or knowledge of the constitution. He had never invested in training his own people or building a network of future administrators. In desperation, he appointed a few loyal early followers such as Marjolein Faber as minister for asylum and immigration; she subsequently got herself embroiled in a scandal for refusing to sign off on royal honours for individuals who volunteered to help asylum seekers and falsely stating that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not democratically elected (she retracted her words). Other PVV ministers also stood out mainly because of their blunders and incompetence. After the cabinet's collapse, his party's ministers seemed almost relieved when speaking to the press. They had been cast in roles they couldn't fulfil and never truly wanted.
Wilders claims he wants to become prime minister after the next elections. But does he truly mean it? There is little evidence that he is taking the country's governance more seriously. After the failed experiment of the past months, future coalition partners will also take this aspect into account – this week the VVD ruled out entering another coalition this with this 'unbelievably untrustworthy partner'. It seems that Wilders, the solitary ideologue, is really more interested in opposition, where the burdens of responsibility are far lighter.
Koen Vossen is a political historian and the author of The Power of Populism: Geert Wilders and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands