Welcome to the Eurointelligence podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me are Susanna Munchank and Jack Smith.

Today we would like to talk about the Netherlands, Gert Wilders, what can say, landslide victory.

Landslide is relative to expectations for sure, but it is even in absolute terms a very

strong result, stronger than the one achieved by Rutter in the last election. And that was

already a very strong result for him at the time. Jack, you've covered the Dutch story this week.

What happened? Depending on who you talked to in the Netherlands, you'll hear a couple of different

stories. But I think the two main drivers, I think, of Wilder's success this time around.

And it really was a success because he massively increased the seat count that his party,

the PVV have in the Dutch parliament, is number one, an issue came up that is very salient

for them. When the Dutch government collapsed

over the summer, it collapsed over asylum policy. And immigration policy has become really a top

of the agenda issue in the Netherlands for this election. That is, if you're anti-immigration,

at least, that is space that Wilders completely owns. It is impossible to be, I think, more anti-immigration than the

PVV. And to a certain extent, if you're that, if you're that way inclined, you might think to

yourself, well, why do I want the diet option that these other parties present when I can just vote for

the PVV? So that that's the first thing. And the second thing was that Wilders took a different

approach this time around.

It as much as he ever could be. He was softer, I guess you could say, and more moderate. He was more open to cooperation. He said, if we want to be in a coalition and there can be compromises along the way. And of course, the biggest and most controversial issue was Wilder's anti-Islam stance.

And he came out and publicly said in the campaign, this isn't a priority for us right now.

We have to focus on other things like the cost of living in the Netherlands.

It was really, I think, those two factors combined.

Plus that emphasis on the cost of living in a kind of inflationary period that managed to get Wilders to where he's now.

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