IN THE first test of public opinion since the collapse of the Dutch government, local voters have given an alarming boost to the Freedom Party (PVV) of anti-Islamist Geert Wilders. The party led in the city of Almere (21 per cent) and was second in The Hague in its first forays into local government. Polls suggest it could now take 27 seats, up from nine, in the 150-member second chamber of the Dutch parliament in the general election on June 9th.
The government collapsed on February 20th after the centre-right Christian Democrat Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende failed to persuade his Labour partner to extend the country’s 2,000-strong military mission to Afghanistan. It is the first Nato government to fall because of the war and Labour’s stance saw it rewarded also by voters in the local elections. With the PVV projected to top the poll and win one more seat in the general election than the Christian Democrats, the building of a working coalition majority without it could be difficult.
Mr Wilders, who compares the Koran to Mein Kampfand wants Muslim immigrants deported, has recently called for a tax on Muslim headgear and for the wearing of headscarves to be banned in public buildings. His success reflects the same fears which saw Switzerland vote recently to ban minarets and has seen success for groups acrosss Europe such as Britain's National Front and UKIP. On Wednesday he was gloating at a post-election rally: "We are going to conquer the entire country".
A maverick libertarian and admirer of Margaret Thatcher who insists he is an Islamophobe, not a racist, Mr Wilders sees himself in the tradition of Dutch controversialists like Pim Fortuyn, murdered after he campaigned against multiculturalism, and Theo van Gogh, the film-maker stabbed to death after making a documentary denouncing alleged Islamic repression. He has thrived on a growing backlash against the country’s admirable tradition of liberal values and ethnic tolerance in a society that has seen its Muslim population grow to 1 million out of 16 million.
Islam, he told the Guardianlast year, "is not a religion, it's the ideology of a retarded culture". And he is currently being prosecuted for hate speech on his film Fitna in which he urges Muslims to rip out "hate-preaching" verses from the Koran. "What can be done in Switzerland can be done here," he said following the Swiss vote. Wednesday's elections suggest there is a real danger Mr Wilders may be right.