Who is Geert Wilders, the surprise winner of the Dutch election?
The anti-Muslim populist has had a long career, but this is his best result yet
ON NOVEMBER 22ND Geert Wilders’s anti-immigrant Party for Freedom (PVV) finished first in the Dutch general election, winning 37 of the 150 seats in parliament, or 23.6% of the vote. His victory was a huge surprise. But the beneficiary of this sudden turn to the hard right is no upstart. The 60-year-old Mr Wilders is the longest-serving MP in the Dutch parliament, having entered in 1998 as a member of the centre-right Liberals (VVD). He quit that party in 2004 over what he considered its softness towards Islam, and founded the PVV in 2006. He has always had a solid base of voter support, but has spent his parliamentary career mostly on the sidelines, shut out of influence by other parties’ refusal to work with him. Now there is a good chance that this will change.
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