This is what the European right-wing looks like

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And, of course, calls for referendum on other, related topics that they find unpalatable.

"Cast Iron Dave", for instance.

There's an interesting situation. Theoretically, liberals are in favour of having a referendum about anything while accusing right-wing parties of being authoritarian and undemocratic and left-wing parties of being unrealistic and undemocratic. However, when right-wing or left-wing parties ask for a referendum on a subject where their opinion is the people's and the current policy would be shattered by a referendum, the ruling liberals suddenly decide that "there is no time" or "it's just another bit of legislation, and it's not important enough." What they realise, however, is that people would smash their policies in a referendum.

That's the moment when authoritarian, undemocratic parties become the democratic parties and the liberal, democratic parties become a consolidated undemocratic elite

Best bit is what Dave said the other month: he won't give us a referendum because he thinks that the UK is better off staying in the EU, and the 1975 referendum on the Common Market continues to have legitimacy in 2012. The sheer unbridled arrogance of the man. He's changed his opinion on an EU referendum more times than a tart's knickers have gone up and down.

He's a bit like our premier, then. Mark Rutte is a two-faced thief. Before the previous elections, his rhetoric was slightly against the European Union having more power. Then he became premier, and immediately supported handing out money to the Greeks, claiming we would have all of it returned. Then he persuaded banks with a slight use of force to invest in a country quite clearly on the verge of bankruptcy. He said they'd get at least half of it back. Then he supported the European Union with another €40 billion, because we'd get the money back. We're not getting any of that money back, and he's the most disastrous premier we've had since 1945.

But his current election campaign features an image: two photos of Italian and Spanish football players, saying "You can have the cup, but you can't have our financial ratings!" I'm hoping the left-wing and the right-wing will unite in reminding him of his previous promises that our annual education budget's worth of European Union bailouts would be returned, potentially with interest. This man deserves a figurative and literal kick up the behind - he won't even feel it after what Van Rompuy did to him - and a fine he can't repay for what he did to our economy and our people. He couldn't pay his damage to the economy off even if his excrement consisted of diamonds until his death.

Mark Rutte sounds very much like David Cameron. Cameron made all sorts of vague anti-EU promises before the Tories came to power but once in he became the most pro-EU PM in memory.

Apart from when they come up with a good idea like taxing banks and then he turns all 'we will fight them on the beaches'.

The transaction tax, or any bank tax, is only a good idea if it's a tax issued by national governments in their own right. If it's the European Union that receives the money, it will simply be a redistribution - banks in countries that are afloat have a net tax in order to pay for banks in countries that are sinking rapidly already. Eventually, however, the money will dry up - if it was infection of other countries by Greece's bad credit they set out to prevent two years ago, they're doing badly. Even Germany is now under scrutiny. It's a process creeping up north. Luckily, it can't go much further north - Scandinavia was wise enough to stay out of the scheme in the first place.

I don't call them knuckle draggers because their votes are wrong; I call them knuckle draggers because they don't like brown people.

I can find someone's views thoroughly repugnant, and still respect that that person's vote is equal to mine.

And sure enough, what does the PVV number turn out to be? 15.

However, I was wrong in my prediction that they would lose ground to the Socialists and finish fourth. The Socialists didn't move, so PVV and the SP are tied for 3rd at 15 each.

While Euroskepticism certainly isn't dead in the Netherlands, it seems that it lacks broad appeal to the electorate of the left and the right.

This isn't quite true - Wilders made some bad tactical errors and had a pretty faltering campaign from what I heard. I think he annoyed a lot of people as well by pulling the plug on the government as he did. He'll be unpopular for a while but he might well recover. As for Roemer, apparently he was quite a lightweight in the debates and came across poorly. The SP rose hugely in the polls before the election but, in the end, didn't take any seats.

What was odd is the fact that the single-issue Pensioners' Party gained seats. Not a common thing IMO. Oh, and the ultraconservative Calvinist SGP gained a seat IIRC (Christ, I'm glad that kind of thinking doesn't hold sway in Europe).

Oh, certainly the leader and his conduct during the campaign has an impact, to be sure. But if that was the case, I would expect to see those votes migrate; or to see an impact on voter turnout as those voters stayed away from the polls.

Who gained on the right? VVD. Who gained among Euroskeptics? No one. Meanwhile, turnout only fell from 75% to 74%, so if they sat on their hands, there was another segment that came out to replace them.

It's possible that Wilders is primarily responsible--but if so, it seems to me that he drove his erstwhile supporters over to VVD.

It's true that Roemer did the campaign pretty poorly, but this isn't the only reason for the SP not holding on to the poll results. The SP being a more extreme version of the PvdA (labour party), often tends to do well in polls, but when the actual election happens, people tend to go for the more moderate PvdA. This year, the drop due to Roemers poor performance and the threat of an overwhelming VVD victory, already pushed people over to PvdA before the actual elections.


Single-issue parties happen all the time. It's one of the disadvantages of our election system, with no vote-threshold. We also have an Animal Rights Party, holding 2 seats. The SGP gained some votes, but primarily from CDA, the Christian Democrats. The CDA voters were not at all pleased with the parties decision to work together with Wilders and many voters shifted. Most went to VVD, but the Christian-conservatives jumped ship to SGP. Fortunately, Christian parties together lost major ground in the last election.