A surge for the FVD, a new right-wing Dutch party
It won more votes than any other in provincial elections
“THE OWL of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk,” announced Thierry Baudet, leader of the Netherlands’ new Forum for Democracy (FvD) party, after the country’s provincial elections on March 20th. The two-year-old FvD had just shocked the establishment, winning the most votes of any party nation-wide and becoming the largest in several provincial legislatures. Dutch voters whose Hegel was shaky turned to Google to work out what the Eurosceptic, climate-change-sceptic foe of immigration was on about, and concluded that he was proclaiming the election a dialectical shift in Dutch history.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Taking flight”
Europe March 30th 2019
- Germany’s struggling Social Democrats
- Ukraine heads for the polls, with a comedian leading
- A surge for the FVD, a new right-wing Dutch party
- Turkey’s President Erdogan accuses the West of terrorism
- France’s yellow-jacket protests are smaller, but still fierce
- Britain’s neighbours fret that it could drift away
From the March 30th 2019 edition
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