Nobody wants to be in a coalition with Wilders

Bad news for everybody who was hoping for Holland to be great again if Wilders was to be the new Prime Minister after the upcoming elections. This weekend it once more became clear  that more or less no serious other politicians want to be in a coalition with Wilders. Let’s have a closer look why Geert can’t score a date to the coalition prom.

What’s the situation?

As you might have read before, the Netherlands is always governed by a coalition government since none of the parties can (thank the lord) get 76 seats in parliament on their own. So over the years it has become a tradition that prior to every election all party leaders say what other parties they really like and who they really don’t and call out others to go along in this high school-esque ritual.

The patterns are always more or less the same. The SP (socialists) are trying to dissuade the PvdA from getting into a coalition with the VVD, so there’s any chance for a ‘grand left’ coalition government. There’s always some kind of hope for a PvdA, SP, Green Left and D66 coalition, which will never happen. The CDA and VVD wil at some point say they like each other, but not too much because otherwise the voter will know that they’re not that very different. And everybody will pick on the bully of the class, the PVV, saying they will never-ever team up with them.

So this past Sunday Prime Minister  Mark Rutte appeared on the dry elitist telivision program of Buitenhof and stated that the PVV and VVD will not be in a coalition government together. Rutte listed Wilders’ remarks on Moroccans, judges and his leftist economic program as the main points why they won’t be governing together after the elections. The only opening he left was that he didn’t absolutely want to exclude the PVV because he didn’t want to permanently exclude the PVV-voters.

So with other parties like the CDA and the SP also having closed the door to a PVV-coalition government it is more or less safe to say that Prime Minister Wilders won’t happen. Because it is known that politicians will never go back on such a promise, right?

What’s really happening?

With only two months to go to election day things are really starting to heat up now. Rutte just tried to change the whle game. Governing coalitions are nice but just as in the United States we care a lot about who is eventually becoming Prime Minister. There’s no way that Wilders will ever become PM without the support of the VVD in a coalition party, so by barring the option of a PVV-VVD government Rutte has essentially said that it’s either going to be Rutte as PM or someone else (but not Wilders).  Now and if there’s one thing PVV-voters like less then Rutte as their leader it’s the prospect of Asscher, Pechtold or the young Jesse Klaver to be in charge.

So with the economic wind of today Rutte has set himself up to steal votes from both the right spectrum (because voting for Wilders now just became a protest-vote only) and votes from the center and left (because a vote for Rutte isn’t potentially a vote for Wilders anymore).