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Saturday 7 March 2009

Interesting news from the Netherlands

Radio Netherlands reports that:
"According to a recent opinion poll, if parliamentary elections were held today, the Freedom Party (PVV) headed by right-wing populist leader Geert Wilders would become the largest party in the Netherlands.

It would win 27 seats in the 150-seat parliament, as opposed to the nine it currently has. The Christian Democrats - the largest party in the governing coalition - would win only 26 seats.

It is not the first time for a populist opposition group to score high in opinion polls, although it is rare for them to come out as potentially the biggest parliamentary party.

In October 2007 a survey carried out like this week's one by pollster Maurice de Hond, predicted 27 for another right-wing populist group, Rita Verdonk's Proud of the Netherlands party. Such a result would have made hers the second largest party in parliament.

Ms Verdonk currently has one seat in parliament - her own - into which she was elected when still a member of the conservative liberal party VVD. Mr Wilders, too, is a VVD renegade. "


If Geert Wilders' Freedom Party won a general election I wonder if the UK Labour government would let him into the Country, might be tricky to refuse access to the head of government of another EU country...

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