European Politics > Will British Tories desert Sunak for Nigel Farage? Geert Wilders can't be PM of the Netherlands though he won the election

 

Rishi Sunak is warned that MORE Tories are poised to switch to Reform UK after Lee Anderson drops bombshell becoming party’s first MP – as poll shows Nigel Farage’s outfit at their highest-ever support… with one-fifth of 2019 Conservative voters backing them

by James Tapsfield, Daily Mail, March 11, 2024:

Rishi Sunak faced warnings today that more Tories are gearing up to switch to Reform UK after Lee Anderson became the insurgents’ first MP.

The PM has been left yet again struggling to quell panic in his ranks after the former Conservative deputy chair was unveiled by jubilant Reform leader Richard Tice at a press conference this morning.

Swiping at his former colleagues, Mr Anderson said he ‘wants our country back’ and had to be able to ‘speak my mind’.

The Ashfield MP said there had been a ‘lot of soul searching in my political journey’ but his parents and his staff had all told him to switch to Reform. 

The news immediately fuelled Conservative panic about the threat of an implosion at the election.

The latest Redfield & Wilton Strategies survey, published this afternoon, showed Reform UK at their highest-ever level with the pollster at 14 per cent support.

This put them just 10 percentage points behind the Tories (24 per cent), with Labour holding an 18-point lead over the Conservatives on 42 per cent…..

At the very  least, Reform will prevent Sunak from forming the next government.  

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Dutch far-right firebrand Wilders says he won't

be prime minister despite election win

Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders said Wednesday that he would not be prime minister despite his stunning election win in November, due to a lack of support across the political spectrum.

Issued on: 14/03/2024 - 01:18  2 min

By:NEWS WIRES

Video by:Carys GARLANDFollow

"I can only become Prime Minister if ALL parties in the coalition support it. That was not the case," Wilders said on X. "The love for my country and voters is bigger and more important than my own position."

The announcement came on the eve of an eagerly awaited report on Dutch coalition talks, amid speculation of a breakthrough that could result in a technocratic government.

The man overseeing the negotiations, Kim Putters, has said the bickering parties were ready to take the "next step" after two days of "good and intense" talks at a country estate.

Wilders posted on X that he wanted a "right-wing cabinet... less asylum and immigration. The Dutch come first."

Party leaders have been tight-lipped during the process but public broadcaster NOS reported that the most likely outcome for Thursday's report was an "extra-parliamentary" or technocratic cabinet. It is unclear exactly what form this could take, but it is expected that four party leaders will serve as MPs.

Parties would appoint the members of the cabinet but they could be drawn from "ordinary" party members or even from outside politics, according to media reports.

Wilders stunned the Netherlands and Europe with a convincing victory in November elections that put him in pole position to lead coalition negotiations.

Unlike Britain, France or the United States for example, the Netherlands has a very fractured political system that means no party is strong enough to govern on its own.

The far-right leader's Freedom Party (PVV) therefore started talks with the centre-right Liberal VVD party, the BBB farmers' party, and a new party, the New Social Contract (NSC).

The NSC, led by anti-corruption champion Pieter Omtzigt, was the other new factor in the election, gaining 20 seats and making it indispensable in any coalition.

Nexit referendum?

But cracks began to show in the talks almost immediately, with sniping on social media and by the NSC in particular raising questions about the PVV's far-right manifesto.

Among other things, the PVV manifesto calls for a ban on mosques, the Koran and Islamic headscarves. It also wants a binding referendum on a "Nexit" – the Netherlands leaving the European Union.

In February, Omtzigt abruptly quit the coalition talks, plunging the process into chaos with the differences between his party and the PVV "too big" to bridge.

At the time, the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper described the talks as a "slow-motion disaster" with "poison, mutual sniping, gossiping".

A new person, known in the Netherlands as an "informer", was appointed to oversee the talks and this appears to have unblocked the stalemate.

The new informer, Putters, managed to get the four party leaders back to the negotiating table with talks reportedly moving towards a technocratic government.

Time is ticking for the Netherlands to find a prime minister, as the man holding the fort, Mark Rutte, is widely expected to become the new NATO secretary general.

Since the election, support for the PVV has only increased, surveys suggest, as voters voice frustration at the slow pace of talks.

"Do not forget: I will become prime minister of the Netherlands one day. With the support of even more Dutch," Wilders posted. "If not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow. Because the voices of millions of Dutch will be heard!"

(AFP)

European Politics > Sweden's Lofven Could Be Dumped; Will EU Crumble - Whose Nexit?

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Israel's PM Netanyahu was knocked off his long-sustained perch last week, and now it appears Stefan Lofven may finally be knocked off his. The two couldn't be more different but both are subject to political assault.

Sweden’s Christian Democrats vow to vote against Prime Minister Lofven in vote of no-confidence, following Left & Sweden Democrats

17 Jun, 2021 13:23

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven (FILE PHOTO) © Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency/via REUTERS

 

The leader of Sweden’s Christian Democrats has said his party will vote in favor of ousting center-left Prime Minister Stefan Lofven in a no-confidence vote, after the Left Party withdrew its support for the government.

On Thursday, the leader of the Christian Democrats, Ebba Busch, vowed to vote against center-left Prime Minister Stefan Lofven’s government. “We were against the Lofven government when it came into power,” Busch told a news conference. “We will vote to oust it,” she added. 

The country’s right-wing party, the Sweden Democrats, submitted a vote of no confidence against the government on Thursday. “If we have a chance to replace this damaging government we will take it,” Henrik Vinge, the Sweden Democrat’s parliamentary group leader, told a news conference. The anti-migrant party currently holds one-fifth of the parliament’s seats. 

The move was triggered after the Left Party, which is not part of the government but has backed the prime minister frequently, said on Thursday it would no longer support Lofven. “We are now seeking support for a vote of no-confidence,” Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar later told reporters during a news conference after rumors spread online. 

The Left fell out with Lofven over plans to ease rent control rules for newly built apartments.

A vote is set to take place on June 21, which may topple the uneasy minority coalition of Social Democrats and Greens that has ruled for over two years. To succeed, a vote of no-confidence would require the support of half of the parliament’s 349 members.

Is the EU about to crumble?

The bloc has never been so weak — just ask the Dutch

BY AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an UnHerd columnist. She is also a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Founder of the AHA Foundation, and host of The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Podcast. Her new book is Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights.

June 16, 2021

  

Almost five years after Britain voted to leave the European Union, the bloc faces an existential question: which, if any, of the remaining 27 countries will be next?

European cohesion is threatened by a range of serious issues; some internal, some external. Mass migration and the challenge it poses to integration remains the most daunting challenge. Last year may have seen a lull in migrant crossings as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, but they are ramping back up, largely from Libya. (Indeed, it is surely only a matter of time before politicians fall prey to their usual smoke and mirrors rhetoric about the “benefits” of mass migration in the context of an ageing population, without much credence given to concerns for cultural integration or assimilation.)

Meanwhile, the EU remains plagued by recurrent tensions over its pandemic response, particularly in regard to vaccine distribution. The European Recovery Fund also had a shaky path to approval, which left many member-states dissatisfied.

But will another member state leave? If you believe the bookies, the odds-on favourite is Italy (available at 3/1) — followed by Greece (6/1) and France (8/1). But as the Brexit referendum demonstrated, the bookies don’t always make the right call — and it would be unwise to rule out the country sitting in fourth place: the Netherlands (12/1). In fact, I believe it’s a strong contender. 

Of all the EU-27 countries, I am most familiar with the Netherlands, where I served as a Member of Parliament from 2003 until 2006. One of my strongest memories of that period was my first trip, along with some of the freshmen Dutch legislators, to the European Parliament in Brussels. Compared with our modest parliament building, the EU building was grand and impressive.

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At lunch, which started as early as 11.30am, we were welcomed with trays of tall flutes filled with the best champagne. We were then served a lavish meal, accompanied by bottle after bottle of wine. This “working” lunch went on until 3.30 p.m.

The week after, back in the national Parliament canteen with its modest assortment of sandwiches, my Dutch colleagues and I were obsessed with one question: who paid for this scandalous extravagance? In the years since, the Dutch have continued to question the financial benefit of remaining an EU member — and it’s not hard to see why.

In 2018, for example, the Netherlands contributed €4.845 billion to the EU; but in return, Brussels spent only €2.470 billion in the country. The European Union’s own website claims that “the EU budget doesn’t aim to redistribute wealth”; in the Netherlands, that doesn’t seem to quite add up.

Over the past decade, the Dutch, who are notoriously frugal, have become increasingly frustrated with the frivolity of EU spending. Exacerbating this irritation is the fact that the Netherlands is the largest net contributor to the EU budget per capita. Meanwhile, the Dutch parliament is grappling over how to afford the maintenance of the equivalent of their NHS and the rising costs of healthcare for an ageing society. Dutch health authorities estimate healthcare spending will double between 2020 and 2040, to €200 billion euros per year, up from €106 billion in 2019.

More important, though, are questions pertaining to national sovereignty and control over sensitive political issues. Every Tuesday morning, I and my fellow MPs would gather to debate both domestic and international issues. Naturally, these discussions sometimes became heated — but this principally occurred when we were told that a decision had to be made by an anonymous, faraway EU official, rather than by us.

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Increasingly, we found that we didn’t have the last word on many of the issues that mattered most to us: immigration, terrorism and agriculture, among others. Nor was this feeling confined to the Dutch political class. When, in 2005, EU countries were presented with the prospect of creating a bloc-wide constitution, only two countries held a referendum that ultimately rejected the proposals: the Netherlands and France.

True, there are still glaring differences between the UK and the Netherlands that make “Nexit” seem impractical. The UK wisely never joined the monetary union, while the Netherlands was among the first to adopt the euro two decades ago. Not only do they share a currency with much of the continent, the Netherlands is also more dependent on the single market than Britain was. And then there’s the fact that the United Kingdom is the sixth-largest economy in the world, while the Netherlands trails a distant 17th (with four other European Union countries ranking higher). While the Dutch see their country as the gateway to Europe, they are not their own island, separated by a Channel, apart from the rest of Europe.

Yet, since I left office, the frictions between the EU and the Netherlands have only worsened. This month, I&O Research, a research agency for the Dutch government, released a report that showed “a larger proportion of the Dutch are still dissatisfied (43%) than satisfied (37%) with what the European Union is doing”.

And while this same report confirmed that there is still nothing close to a majority for “Nexit” — a position with adherents only among the populist FvD and PVV parties — it did reveal that “in a referendum on whether the Netherlands should remain a member of the European Union, 61% would now vote for ‘remain in the EU.’” Less than a year ago, the figure was 72 percent. That is a striking decrease of support for the EU. The 61% figure is also striking for another reason — it’s lower than the proportion of Brits who supported Remain a year before the Brexit vote (66%). And we all know how that turned out.

Context was everything in the UK five years ago. We forget now how unlikely Brexit seemed to most commentators — until the first, stunning results came in from northern English cities such as Sunderland.

Today, the context has shifted for one fundamental reason. Brexit has happened, and it has not been the unmitigated disaster that so many Remainers predicted. On the contrary, the UK’s superior vaccine strategy — nimble where the EU’s was lumbering and bureaucratic — provided a better advertisement for “taking back control” than anything in the original Leave campaign.

Could watching a successful exit by the UK push the Dutch population further in this direction? Don’t rule it out.

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Dutch Head to Polls Amid Tense Immigration Policy Debate

Do they even know what Rutte did? 

© Cris Toala Olivares / Reuters

Up to 13 million Dutch voters are expected to head to the polls on Wednesday to elect 150 members of the lower house of parliament in a symbolic Euroscepticism showdown that seems to have split society along the immigration policy divide.

Some 28 parties are competing in the election which is largely viewed as a face-off between ultranationalist Geert Wilders and the current Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Under the proportional representation system, any party who receives more than 0.67 percent of the vote, will pass the mandated threshold and get at least one seat. 

Following the latest round of televised debates on Tuesday night in which representatives of 13 parties competed, Prime Minister Rutte’s People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) is leading Wilder’s Party for Freedom (PVV) by a small margin.

The Dutch Peilingwijzer website which tracks down six polling outlets says that VVD will likely gain between 24-28 seats, versus 19-22 that will most likely go to PVV. The Christian Democratic Appeal Party (CDA) and its leader Sybrand Buma are predicted to gain between 19-21 seats. 

At least four other parties are likely to gain more than 10 seats. These include the centrist D66, Green-Left, the Socialist Party and the social democrat Labour Party (PvdA). Whichever party can secure the majority 76 seats in parliament, either on its own or through a coalition, will form the new Dutch government and choose the Prime Minister.

Merkel and Rutte make a secret deal with Turkey promising to take in hundreds of thousands of migrants even if the rest of the EU refuses. Turkey gets to pick the refugees going into Europe and are sending the sick and uneducated while keeping the educated and healthy in Turkey.

Do the Dutch actually know this?

Rutte who took on Wilders in a heated debate on Monday night has made it clear that his party will not work with the PVV leader.

“Not even in a tolerance structure – no, never, no,” Rutte said, dismissing the possibility of forming a coalition with Wilders.

Rutte is urging voters to back him so that he continue his political course and focus on preserving the Dutch economic recovery and its place in the European Union.

Wilders remains hopeful that he will be able to persuade voters to side with the global anti-establishment trend reinvigorated by the Brexit referendum and the victory of Donald Trump in the US.

Wilders has said that Netherlands’ exit from the European Union would be “the best thing that could happen to us”.

Rutte instead argued that the so-called Nexit would cost 1.5 million jobs and create “chaos”.

Wilders, on the other hand, told the voters that after a Nexit, the Dutch would become the “master of our own country again”.

As part of his controversial agenda, the 53-year old Wilders wants to close Islamic schools and asylum centers. In addition, Wilders wants to shut down borders with a blanket ban on migrants from Muslim countries. The ultra-conservative also wants the Koran to be banned in the Netherlands.

During the final debate, Wilders engaged in an intense face-off with PvdA party leader Lodewijk Asscher over the issue of immigration.

The issue and debate around foreigners in the Netherlands has heightened in recent days following the diplomatic row and weekend rioting over the barring of the Turkish family minister from entering the Turkish Consulate in Rotterdam.

“If you want to tackle crime you should deport those foreigners who rape, commit a crime and laugh at our police,” Wilders said. “The Netherlands is not for everyone, the Netherlands is for the Dutch.” 

Some of Wilder's supporters told RT ahead of the election that the Party for Freedom is shaping the new political agenda for the Netherlands.

“Wilders is a person who notices the frustration, what is brewing and annoying people and he expresses it. Other parties are now listening as well,” Wim Keizer a local politician in Volendam told RT.

While the PVV's support is strong, Wilders is unlikely to be able to form the next government even if he wins the popular vote, as all mainstream parties have ruled out working with him.

Rest assured, Holland, your government will continue to ensure that the Netherlands completes its exercise in cultural suicide! How can so many be so blind?