The humiliation of Holland’s Christian Democrats in the Dutch elections was thoroughly well deserved and the ejection of prime minister Jan Peter (“no second referendum for the Dutch”) Balkenende ought to be a source of immense satisfaction. Good riddance to him. This piece from the London Times on the wider significance of the result is worth pondering:
The strength of feeling on immigration and austerity cuts across party boundaries. This is the first election in the eurozone since the Mediterranean finance crisis, and the outcome has been taken as a sign of how the public, in a country not directly embroiled in that drama, reacts to the message that spending cuts are necessary — with resignation but also resentment about the demands imposed by other EU countries’ behaviour.
The big losers, the Christian Democrats led by Jan Peter Balkenende, the Prime Minister, are emphatically out. The row that brought down his Government — over the Dutch deployment to Afghanistan — also showed, many felt at the time, a growing discomfort with the demands of the EU…This election represented a kind of grumbling rather than an emphatic rejection of European principles. Far-right parties periodically do well in certain elections, and then fall back as the grievance on which they play dies down. But the confusion of the result sends a very clear signal: the Dutch are united in finding the burdens of EU membership very uncomfortable.
Indeed they are. And not only the Dutch.