WeeklyWorker

20.11.2025
Geert Wilders: out in the cold - for the moment

Politics of right-moving centre

Rogier Specht of the Communistisch Platform assesses the recent general election and the first attempts to form a new coalition government. Unfortunately what passes for the ‘left’ is pro-Nato and pro-war. Principled Marxists have a duty to get their act together

The centre holds. That was the mainstream media story of the October 29 general election in the Netherlands. After the 2023 rightwing victory of Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV), Rob Jetten’s centre-liberal Democrats 66 (D66) nearly tripled its seats, putting them in front of the PVV. London’s Guardian called it “an uplifting victory for the politics of hope”.1 For the left, however, there is less to be hopeful about.

The fall of the last cabinet in 2023 saw an end to the 13-year political reign of then prime minister (and now Nato secretary general) Mark Rutte and his conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). That period consisted of various coalition governments with various different parties, while the last years of Rutte’s administrations were characterised by political scandals. Most importantly, the child benefit furore and the nitrogen crisis. The child benefit scandal saw thousands of families wrongly targeted for welfare fraud, often on the basis of their ethnic background.2 The nitrogen crisis was the result of a legal ruling on emissions, forcing a reluctant government to take measures on agriculture.3

The child benefit scandal led to MP Pieter Omtzigt, who had partially exposed it, splitting from the Christian Democratic Party (CDA) and forming his own party, New Social Contract (NSC), which called for constitutional and democratic renewal. He was hailed as the messiah by the press, and his party won 20 seats out of 150 in its first election outing. The nitrogen crisis, meanwhile, led to farmer riots, and subsequently to the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), which also consisted of a lot of former CDA members. The BBB surprisingly won the 2023 provincial elections with nearly 20% of the vote, though it soon lost support, only winning 5% of the vote in the 2023 general elections.

The result of the 2023 elections was a PVV-VVD-NSC-BBB rightwing coalition government, which was mostly characterised by political bickering. There were almost weekly fall-outs over this or that issue between the coalition parties. After nearly two years, the government was abandoned by Wilders when he gave the coalition an ultimatum on anti-immigration measures. The other parties in reality largely supported the measures, but at that point it hardly mattered any more.

Now, the October 29 election result has led to some shifts between parties. Those in the rightwing coalition mostly lost votes, though not equally. Wilders’ PVV lost 11 seats, going from 37 to 26. The VVD lost two seats, going from 24 to 22. After their rise in the last elections, the NSC lost all their seats, falling from 20 to zero. The BBB tally went down from seven to four.

Looking at the centre, there have also been some shifts. The centre-liberal D66 gained narrowly from the PVV and ended up being the election winner with 26 seats. The Christian democratic CDA regained some of the ground it had lost to NSC and the BBB, increasing its seats from five to 18, while the centre-left/social democratic GreenLeft/Labour Party saw a decline from 25 to 20.

Seemingly then, there has been some restoration of the centre. But, looking at the far right, there also have been some shifts. Although Wilders’ PVV lost 11 seats, the far right actually gained 12. The Forum For Democracy (FVD) had previously lost votes over, among other things, anti-Semitic texts and conspiracy theories about the world being governed by reptiles. But on October 29 they gained four seats, going from three to seven. The Conservative Liberals (JA21), which split from FVD over these scandals, used the failure of the PVV government to present itself as the ‘clean’ right, unmarred by scandals, and thus as a potential junior coalition partner. It grew from just one seat to nine. So the far right has around 45 seats - a not insignificant bloc. Besides this, the centre parties have also significantly shifted to the right on immigration.

Soft left

Meanwhile, the Dutch centre-left has been steadily declining over the last 15 years. It now has 26 seats, divided between the Green Left/Labour Party (GL/PVDA), the Socialist Party (SP) and the Party for Animals (PVDD).

The Labour Party(PvdA) was decimated after forming a coalition government with the VVD following the 2012 elections (the second Rutte government) - a defeat it is still recovering from. It has spent the last few years trying to merge with the Green Lefts. This year the merger was agreed by their congresses, though the two organisations have yet to merge, and stood separately, but as part of the same list for the second time. The aim of the merger is to form a larger centre-left governing party that can be a stronger bloc in coalition negotiations. This is in line with the shift to the right that the GL has been undergoing since its inception - seen through its support for austerity, war and joining municipal coalition governments.

The unity between the two is based on a programme of cuts, support for the Nato and EU war machines, and restrictions on immigration. Labour leader and former vice-president of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, has been passionately advocating a “centre cabinet”: ie, a VVD-CDA-D66 coalition with his own party. The GL-PVDA bloc has positioned itself as the guardian of the capitalist order alongside the liberal parties, while Timmermans presented himself as the Dutch Keir Starmer. The members of this ‘merger in progress’ ended up losing five seats, from 25 to 20, which led to Timmermans stepping down, though it is likely that the party will be a coalition partner in the coming government.

As for the Socialist Party, it has gone further downhill. Having won 25 seats in 2006, it now has just three (dropping by another two last month). So it has been losing support for 15 years. In 2021 it expelled the Communistisch Platform, and the SP’s youth organisation, ROOD, over a fight about the SP positioning itself as a potential coalition partner with VVD. In the latest elections the SP half-heartedly opposed both the 5% Nato budget commitment and Rearm Europe. It proposed establishing a ‘Nato mark two’, which would exclude the Americans (global instability is attributed to lawlessness, driven by the US).

The party also continues to support arms supplies to Ukraine - supposedly on condition that diplomatic channels are maintained at the same time. But in practice this is indistinguishable from the existing position of European powers (France, Germany, Italy …) to force Russia to the negotiating table. Taken together, the SP advocates a social-imperialist ‘militarisation at a slower pace’, with a reorientation towards French-European imperial interests. The party also supports measures against migrant workers.

The SP is willing to sacrifice its ‘principles’ for participation in government with bourgeois parties. In recent years, it has increasingly declared the VVD to be the main instigator of the problems of the past 15 years. Whereas the SP previously launched fierce attacks on, for example, the PVDA for its participation in ‘Rutte 2’ (the executive branch of the government from 2012 until 2017), it now seems to be putting itself forward for a role as junior coalition partner. The SP’s mild criticism of coalition participation with rightwing parties is thus definitively a thing of the past. It has proposed a “coffee coalition” with just about all parties up to and including the CDA.4

Then there is the Party for the Animals (PVDD). Over the past decade, its course has been characterised by a shift from an ideology focused on animal welfare, to an ecologically tinged variant of utopian socialism. Previously, the party claimed it was “neither left nor right”, but now it has shifted, positioning itself more explicitly as ‘leftwing’ by placing increasing emphasis on social issues. However, these issues are primarily analysed from the perspective of society’s ecological needs. With regards to programme, the party is very similar to the SP.

Animal left

Recently, it has gained a lot of support among the activist left through its opposition to the genocide in Palestine (party leader Esther Ouwehand recently appeared in parliament wearing Palestinian colours5). The PVDD used to be a pacifist party, but, with the Ukraine war, it too has been shifting. Like many other green parties in Europe, it now enthusiastically supports war from an ecological perspective!

It’s position on Nato is virtually identical to that of the SP, with only variations in exact wording and a few differences in nuance. Both want a ‘Nato mark two’ without the US (like the Greens’ Zack Polanski in Britain). They support arms supplies to Ukraine, but on condition that diplomatic negotiations are encouraged and that the export of ‘prohibited’ weapons is halted. Unlike the SP, however, the PVDD has enthusiastically backed the ‘Rearm Europe’ plan. This was accompanied by a performance by the Russian feminist protest band, Pussy Riot, at its last party congress. Punk rock in support of imperialism. Nonetheless, the party remained on three seats.

Lastly there is the intersectionalist party, BIJ1. This lash-up is to the left of the SP and PVDD in opposing Nato and militarisation. The party emerged from the anti-racism movement and recruited quite a lot of activists and NGO employees. At its height it gained one MP, but lost that seat in 2023. BIJ1 never succeeded in building a functioning party structure and has been plagued by internal disputes, breakaway councillors and, to keep all this under control, anti-democratic measures at online conferences. They came even less close to a seat in parliament this time around. The party seems very close to its end.

In conclusion, these elections have led to the restoration of the centre, but by shifting to the right - most significantly on immigration. Besides that, the far right has stabilised into a very sizable block. It will be the liberal D66 that will form the core of a new coalition government: its Wouter Koolmees was appointed as verkenner (scout) to explore potential combinations. A former D66 social affairs minister and current chief executive of the national train service NS, Koolmees’s main idea is to form D66 and CDA into a governmental core around an agreement on what are normally sticking points: immigration, housing, security and defence, nitrogen emissions and the economy.

To this goal two informateurs6 have been appointed to guide this process - former CDA leader Sybrand Buma and former D66 minister of finance and economic affairs, Hans Wijers - but Wijers stepped down within 20 hours after the press published negative comments he made about VVD leader Yesilgöz.

Because of the consensus on sidelining Wilders and the PVV, the most likely outcome is a centre-right or centre-left governing alliance, consisting respectively of D66-VVD-CDA-JA21 or D66-VVD-CDA-GL/PVDA. The VVD, however, has also excluded the possibility of a coalition with GL/PVDA and is trying to manoeuvre D66 into the centre-right option. The next report on negotiations must be presented to parliament by a December 9 deadline.

The new government will surely go for large-scale rearmament in line with both the Nato 5% target and the Rearm Europe plans, with several parties (eg, D66, CDA and JA21) advocating the (re)introduction of conscription. VVD campaigned for the “largest investment in security ever”. This large-scale rearmament means that a decision has been made to torpedo the remnants of social policy. This militarisation is already accompanied by increasing repression and restrictions on freedom of expression, which has been seen with the repression of the Palestine solidarity movement.7

What passes for the ‘left’ is weak in size and collaborates with the plans for militarisation. While revolutionary left groups have been growing on the margins, they are still far from being able to meaningfully challenge the parliamentary ‘left’. In the immediate future there is little to be hopeful about.

  1. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/02/the-guardian-view-on-the-dutch-election-an-uplifting-victory-for-the-politics-of-hope-not-hate.↩︎

  2. www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/10/xenophobic-machines-dutch-child-benefit-scandal.↩︎

  3. www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/16/nitrogen-wars-the-dutch-farmers-revolt-that-turned-a-nation-upside-down.↩︎

  4. www.sp.nl/nieuws/verruil-de-kibbelcoalitie-voor-een-koffiecoalitie.↩︎

  5. www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/9/19/dutch-mp-sent-out-of-parliament-for-wearing-colours-of-palestine-flag.↩︎

  6. Informateurs prepare the way for a formateur to lead the formation of a coalition government. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formateur.↩︎

  7. www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/14/dutch-authorities-investigate-alleged-police-violence-after-pro-palestinian-protest.↩︎