Good morning. The Dutch government dramatically collapsed on Tuesday after far-right politician Geert Wilders pulled out of the coalition, citing his frustration over immigration and asylum policy.
Shortly afterwards the prime minister, Dick Schoof, handed in his resignation to King Willem-Alexander. Fresh elections are expected in October. Until then ministers will remain in place in a caretaker capacity.
There are a lot of players in this coalition and plenty of initials to keep track of (bear with me). In a political earthquake, Wilders’ anti-Islam Freedom party (PVV) emerged as the largest party in parliament in the last election. The other coalition members were the conservative-liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), which came third, the centrist New Social Contract (NSC), which came fourth, and the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), sixth. It took six months of negotiations to piece this coalition government together, and 10 months for it all to come crashing down.
Schoof called Wilders’ decision “irresponsible and unnecessary”. The VVD leader, Dilan Yeşilgöz, said she was “shocked” by the “super-irresponsible” move. Wilders, for his part, said he would “fight the coming elections to make the PVV even stronger” with the goal of emerging on the other side as prime minister.
In today’s newsletter I spoke to Cas Mudde, a Dutch political scientist and leading expert on populism and the radical right who is based at the University of Georgia. That’s after the headlines.
Five big stories
US news | Donald Trump has signed a sweeping order banning travel from 12 countries and restricting travel from seven others, reviving and expanding the travel bans from his first term. Security concerns and visa overstays, the US president said, justified the move.
Fuel poverty | Bereaved families of tens of thousands of dead pensioners could be pursued by tax officials to recoup winter fuel payments under a new system being explored by the Treasury, the Guardian has learned.
Israel-Gaza war | The Palestinian Red Crescent Society has detailed the harrowing account of one of its paramedics, Asaad al-Nasasra, 47, who told the organisation he heard Israeli troops shoot first responders. The attack on a convoy of emergency vehicles killed 15 others.
UK economy | Keir Starmer has said he hopes a trade deal struck last month with the US can come into effect “in just a couple of weeks”, as the White House has signalled that the UK will be spared the 50% steel and aluminium tariffs that came into force on Wednesday.
Global health | A cure for HIV may be closer after researchers discovered a new way to force the virus out of hiding in human cells. This “overwhelming” breakthrough could help overcome one of the biggest obstacles to a cure: the virus’s ability to lie dormant in certain white blood cells.
In depth: ‘He believes that the government didn’t do what he wanted, so he got out’
Unstable coalition governments aren’t new on the Dutch political scene. The threshold for a party to enter parliament is quite low compared to other European countries. In 2002, a coalition government collapsed in less than 100 days. Still, this latest debacle stands out.
Things were rocky for the coalition from the beginning. The two biggest parties, the PVV and NSC, were not especially eager to join the government, as Mudde explains, and neither was the VVD. They eventually reached an agreement that allowed the PVV to be part of the government, but barred Geert Wilders from becoming prime minister or taking a cabinet post.
“From the start this was a very unlikely coalition and they have been fighting about almost everything. That has a lot to do with the fact that Wilders isn’t in the government. He’s the leader of the biggest party who is very isolated,” Mudde said.
It’s important to remember that Wilders is the PVV. “You have all these people in the government from Wilders’ party who have no power because the only one who decides is Wilders. He’s mostly communicating through Twitter,” Mudde added.
The BBB and NSC are both new and inexperienced political parties that were slipping in the polls. The former dominant party, the VVD, was internally divided about joining the coalition and likely to have been searching for an exit strategy. “Despite this and despite a number of crises, the government survived 2024,” Mudde said.
Then came the so-called issues around immigration and asylum. From all accounts, none of the other coalition parties saw it as a crisis – except Wilders.
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What were Wilders’ immigration policies?
Wilders had wanted to adopt a 10-point plan to radically reduce immigration and asylum. This included enlisting the army to secure and patrol the borders, turning all asylum seekers back when they reached the Netherlands, closing refugee accommodation facilities, deporting all Syrian refugees, suspending EU asylum quotas, and banning family members joining refugees already in the country.
Unsurprisingly, legal experts said several of these proposed policies breached European human rights laws or the UN refugee convention, to which the Netherlands is a signatory.
Still, Mudde said the government had tried to bring immigration down through drastic measures. For one, the government wanted to declare a national immigration crisis, which would have granted special powers, but a court struck it down as unconstitutional.
“They have passed many other legislations, but of course it has to be implemented. And that often takes a long time. This is much more about impatience than about not having policies passed,” Mudde said.
One of the parties in the coalition was against declaring an immigration crisis. “But they mostly didn’t want to do that because it was clear that it would be struck down by the court. So the difference between the parties has not so much been about what we should do. It is much more about how to do it. It is not as if these other parties have said, no, you are too extreme. They’ve pretty much given Wilders everything on immigration,” Mudde added.
What the government did push for, he said, was bringing immigration down within the legal framework of Dutch liberal democracy.
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Why did he pull out?
Wilders’ decision to pull out of the coalition is widely seen as bizarre. Recent polls show the PVV has lost significant voter support since its shock election victory in November 2023. The party is now polling at about 20%, roughly level with the Labour/Green alliance, currently the second-largest bloc in parliament (more on them soon).
“There is no strategic decision here. It is being framed by the other parties as him being unreliable, and this plays into the broader narrative of populists being irrational, like he is some kind of Trump. He is not reckless usually, so this is a very odd decision,” Mudde said.
Unlike some other far-right politicians, Mudde added, Wilders is a true believer. “Wilders has been living for more than 15 years under 24/7 police protection because of the threat of jihadists. And while he denies that this has affected the way he looks at the world, there’s no way that this hasn’t impacted him.”
For Wilders, the fight against immigration, or more bluntly, against Islam and Muslims, is existential. “It is the only issue for him, it is fundamental. He’s not concerned about surviving as leader because he is the party. He believes that the government didn’t do what he wanted, so he got out of the government. It’s an ideological decision, which strategically doesn’t make much sense. That is very rare in politics: to put ideologies over strategy.”
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What happens next?
It is hard to predict who will come out on top in the October election – and much of what is happening now may be forgotten by then.
After the collapse, Wilders came out swinging with one clear message to voters: I wasn’t allowed to implement the radical changes the country needs. Vote for us because we’re too big to ignore.
The VVD, under Dilan Yeşilgöz, has responded in a way reminiscent of former prime minister Mark Rutte, Mudde explains: acknowledging that immigration is a major issue but insisting that far-right populists like Wilders are all talk and no delivery.
Yeşilgöz hasn’t ruled out governing with Wilders again. That risks a repeat of the 2023 election, which was framed around immigration and whether Wilders should be allowed into government, which is a narrative that ultimately benefits him.
There is still a chance the VVD could pivot back to traditional issues, such as lowering taxes, he added. If that happens, the Netherlands could end up with a centrist government made up of the VVD, GroenLinks–PvdA, D66, and the Christian Democrats, “bringing the Netherlands back to where it has been for a long time”.
According to Mudde, two key players in setting the political tone are the Dutch media, which has been “obsessed” with the far right and immigration since the 2002 assassination of Pim Fortuyn, and the VVD itself.
“Politicians create their own realities,” Mudde says. “And so just as Starmer thinks that if he is going to be Reform-lite, then he’s going to win back the white working-class vote, which he never lost actually, the VVD has a similar story: they think that if we campaign as the trustworthy anti-immigrant party, then we will win back the voters who we lost to Wilders.” But if they choose to focus on immigration, the media will follow, and the far right will benefit, he added.
And what of the centre left? The Social Democrats and the Greens are running on a joint list and are very close to merging, Mudde explains. That’s made them more interesting to the media and helped them poll neck-and-neck with the far-right PVV.
“They’ve got Frans Timmermans, who’s a heavyweight. But they haven’t been able to truly shift the discourse. He’ll likely campaign against the far right — ‘Vote for us, or you’ll get Wilders’ — but that still keeps the focus on Wilders,” Mudde said.
“Whereas if you campaign on housing, education, healthcare, which are major issues in the Netherlands, then you force the VVD to have a position on that. You even force Wilders to have a position on that.”
What else we’ve been reading
Sport
Tennis | The wildcard French player Lois Boisson, who was ranked 361 in the world at the start of the French Open, stunned sixth seed Mirra Andreeva in a 7-6 6-3 victory to reach the semi-finals on her debut. In the men’s draw, Novak Djokovic defeated Alexander Zverev in four sets and will next face world No 1 Jannik Sinner in a semi-final.
Football | The England vice-captain Millie Bright has withdrawn from next month’s Euros in Switzerland, saying it “is the right thing for my health and my future”. The decision is a setback for Sarina Wiegman before the defence of the title the Lionesses won three years ago.
Football | Chelsea have strengthened their attack by completing the £30m signing of Liam Delap from Ipswich. The club were determined to bring in a new striker this summer and have moved swiftly to secure one of their top targets.
The front pages
“Chaos fears over return of winter fuel payments” says the Guardian, while the Times has “Pensioners face tax hit for winter fuel U-turn” and the Express renders it as “Farage backs call for full U-turn to help OAPs”. The i paper plays this one with a straight bat: “Pensioners on disability and housing benefit in line for winter fuel payments”. “Glee school meals” – the Mirror claims “campaign victories” on that issue and the winter fuel money. “Reeves forced to drop net zero cuts” – that’s the Telegraph while the chancellor gets a better run in the Metro with “Reeves unveils major transport plan … £15bn to get Britain moving”. Top story in the Financial Times is “Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ will swell US debt by $2.4tn, warns watchdog”. “Battle lines drawn over immigration” says the Daily Mail, summarising the platforms of “Keir” and “Kemi” side by side below.
Today in Focus
Is AI about to steal your job?
Should we believe the warning that AI is about to upend the jobs market? Chris Stokel-Walker reports
Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
From its plot to its performances and picturesque Oregon setting, The Goonies remains a timeless piece of cinema. But as it turns 40, it turns out the film still has its secrets, as Ann Lee finds out in this behind the scenes oral history, in which the cast and crew spill on their on-set antics.
“We were a family. We loved each other and we bickered and drove each other mad,” says Kerri Green, who plays cheerleader Andy.
“It’s about friendship. It’s an underdog story; that idea that if you do this together, you’re going to succeed. It was such a magical thing. I have learned to just look back and appreciate how lucky I was to have been part of that.”
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