https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/pyrrhic-victory?pc=1715
Ewald Engelen
13 November 2025 Politics

Election results can often be a Rorschach test for pundits, the patterns they discern revealing as much about their ideological disposition as the political landscape. This is especially true in the Dutch case, where due to the country’s proportional voting system and low threshold for parties to win representation, they become the equivalent of a European value survey. No fewer than 27 parties participated in the general elections of 29 October, with a total of 1,166 candidates vying for one of the 150 seats of the Dutch second chamber, representing ideologies that range from the well-established – social democrat, green, Christian democrat, conservative, liberal – to the new and obscure. What are the most salient features of this morass of results? The most prominent story in the respectable press has been the self-congratulatory one of the liberal establishment, touting the ‘stunning success’ of Rob Jetten’s centrist Democracy 66 (D66) over Geert Wilders’s governing Party for Freedom (PVV). Take heed, this is how to beat the populist right. Yet the reality is more complicated, and the grounds for optimism more mixed.

D66 may have emerged as the largest party, but on the lowest number of seats in Dutch history (26 of 150). By contrast, though the Freedom Party lost 11 seats it still achieved its second best result ever, and the right as a whole has never been stronger: 91 seats went to a total of eight other right-wing parties. Many who voted for the PVV in 2023 have been disappointed by the coalition they have led, and the failure to deliver on campaign promises: migration and asylum claims haven’t stopped; the housing crisis is worse than ever; no ‘Nexit’ referendum was held; the European obligation to reduce nitrogen concentrations still hangs over the outsize livestock industry. Yet those voters have remained steadfastly on the right. Strikingly, there was no sign of Politikverdrossenheit: turnout even increased slightly to 78.4 per cent.

Meanwhile, the left parties were reduced to a meagre 33 seats, an all-time low. Such overwhelming failure to capitalise on the collapse of the PVV-led government catalysed the immediate resignation of Frans Timmermans, leader of the recently merged Green and Social Democratic parties, GroenLinks–PvdA, which actually managed to lose electoral ground. The Socialist Party meanwhile received only 3 seats; its inability to mop up disaffected voters surely due in large part to its pivot from attacking the technocratic elites of the extreme centre to attacking Wilders and his voters, painting itself into a corner by patronizing and insulting those it needed to win over.

While the liberal centre’s supposed vanquishing of the right is far less clear-cut than establishment media commentary suggests, what these results do unambiguously show is the further entrenchment of the so-called diploma divide. The segment of the electorate with a university degree increasingly shares a progressive, meritocratic and cosmopolitan worldview, and dominates civil society and public debate, as well as institutions of higher learning and policy making. These voters full-throatedly rejected the Freedom Party-led coalition for being xenophobic, anti-democratic, even fascist. They are susceptible to what has been termed hyperpolitics – intense but shallow forms of politicization, often producing fickleness, and the results of D66 are a case in point. From being virtually wiped out in 2003, it gained 24 seats in 2021, lost most of that again in 2023, only to achieve its best result ever two years later. Instead of rallying behind the experienced Timmermans, who entered the race as the leading alternative to Mr. Wilders, this group of voters instead rallied behind the youthful, Kennedy-like Mr. Jetten, whose outfit was initially set up in 1966 to reinvigorate the Dutch political system with a strong dose of direct democracy, but has over time become its fiercest critic as referendums have started to produce populist majorities.

This surge was aided by what might be described as the increasing Americanization of Dutch politics. What is called lobbying in the US (and the EU) is nothing new: the Dutch version is the staid old corporatism of political co-decision making by labour unions and, increasingly, large business organizations. However, with the increasing commodification of the Dutch press and the rise of social media as an intermediary between politicians and voters, campaign budgets have become ever more crucial for mobilizing voters. D66 – as the political representative of the cultural sector-based factions of the Dutch bourgeoisie – has a track record of media-savvy campaigns and received significant largesse to bankroll this from Dutch tech-entrepreneurs. Data shows that they massively outspent the other parties, more than doubling the campaign spending of the runner up. The consequence was a highly unequal playing field. In the establishment media, too, Mr. Jetten benefitted hugely from his weekly appearances on a widely viewed public TV programme called De slimste mens ter wereld (The World’s Smartest Person), which primed voters to perceive him and his party in a sympathetic light.

The most important aspect of the election, however, is one that has gone largely unmentioned. On 25 June, the assembled leaders of the member states of NATO committed to substantially ramp up their defence spending, from 2 per cent of GDP to 3.5-5 per cent. In the EU context that implies €6,400 billion of expenditure on weaponry over the next ten years; for the Dutch, that amounts to €350-500 billion. This will have a major impact on government budgets, and will become increasingly politically significant, as European member states reveal the austerity necessary to meet this commitment. And indeed, higher taxes, cutbacks on pensions, healthcare, welfare and other social benefits voters cherish, could be found in the party programmes of the Dutch parties as they entered the electoral race. And yet, none of these trade-offs featured in the many televised debates. Migration, as always, was a dominant topic; so too the housing shortage, education and speculation on post-election coalition partners. But arguably the most consequential budgetary commitment since the Treaty of Maastricht of 1992 received almost no airtime.

If defence was debated at all it was in the form of whether the Dutch should revert to mandatory conscription, which was legally suspended in 1997. This, coincidentally, caused Mr. Jetten to make his one faux pas in an otherwise spotless campaign, when he claimed to be in favour of its reinstatement since ‘many guys here would love to crawl through the mud with Princes Amalia’, the eldest daughter of the Dutch royal family who had just commenced military training. Despite the blatant sexism, it didn’t appear to cost him votes.

One can only speculate about the reasons why the political and journalistic class chose to neglect the issue of higher defence spending and its consequences. Part of the answer is that only two parties – the Socialist Party and the far-right Forum for Democracy – together representing only eight seats (now ten), are critical of the new NATO norm, and were hence not invited to participate in the TV debates – seen both as too small and beyond the pale. Any divergence from the pro-NATO script immediately provokes accusations of reproducing Russian talking points.

The larger, more ominous, reason, however, is that after more than three years of anti-Russian and pro-NATO propaganda, the need to ramp up defence spending is seen as so self-evident that essential questions are not even posed. Does Europe really face a Russian security threat? Does Europe really lag behind Russia in soldiers and weaponry? Do we really see indications that the US is withdrawing from Europe? Empirically, the answer to all these questions is no, but the new NATO norm is seen as beyond question. The result is a form of policy making by stealth that lacks input legitimacy, and is sure to harm the public services on which the Dutch state relies for its output legitimacy. What, from the perspective of mainstream political operatives, appears to be ‘smart’ politics – depriving voters of a say on the sacrifices they will be forced to make – will be perceived by voters as undemocratic manipulation as soon as the effects start to bite.

What to expect now? As always, the elections will be followed by lengthy, complex negotiations between potential coalition partners to secure a stable majority. At the time of writing, these could either favour the centre-left or the centre-right. However, given the lack of ideological coherence to the results, combined with the bipartisan commitment to increasing defence spending, the likelihood is that the green and social objectives – building ten new towns to alleviate the housing crisis; buying out large emitters to alleviate the nitrogen crisis; subsidising solar panels and heat pumps to conform to the Paris Treaty – which galvanised voters in the first place will fall by the wayside in the negotiations. The result will be a coalition agreement rich in rhetoric and light on policy. It is not hard to predict what the longer-term electoral consequences of all this will be. Even angrier voters, even more prone to being seduced by the forces of populist reaction next time around. Rather than a lesson in how to beat the right, this seems likely to prove to be a Pyrrhic victory for the centre.