As Srdja Trifkovic has already recorded on this site, Geert Wilders has continued his remarkable political progress with better-than-expected results in the Dutch general election of 9th June. His Partij Voor Vrijheid (PVV) increased its number of seats in the Dutch parliament from 9 to 24. An election fought ostensibly on the economy and Afghanistan clearly had an important if sotto voce immigration angle.

Dutch politics are complex, and getting more complex as the comfortable postwar consensus breaks down irretrievably. As the Guardian’s Ian Traynor noted on 10 June, “The election… revealed a political spectrum fragmented as seldom before and thoroughly polarized.”

In an echo of the bitter 16th century struggles against the Duke of Alva’s tercios (see Motley’s 1856 classic The Rise of the Dutch Republic or Edward Grierson’s excellent 1969 The Fatal Inheritance), Holland has always had important divisions between the largely Protestant north and the largely Catholic south, with a more secular, mercantile urban middle class acting as counterbalance. In recent decades, this urban and now post-Christian majority has dominated, with couldn’t-care-less views on everything from sexual morality and drugs to immigration, first from former imperial possessions and then from anywhere, into one of the world’s most densely-populated countries. This set the scene for the rise and sanguinary fall of Pim Fortuyn and now the rise of Wilders (who lives under permanent police protection to avoid sharing the fate of his political predecessor).

In what is being seen as a dry run for the national elections of 9 June, in the 3 March local elections Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) won control of its first municipality and came second in The Hague.

The town of Almere at the southern end of the Ijesselmeer is one of the newest towns in Holland, founded in 1975 on land reclaimed from the Zuider Zee only seven years previously. The town’s youthfulness and its mostly homogenous population may seem to be at odds with Wilders’ anti-Islamic and conservative message, but most of its residents commute to work in Amsterdam. The significance of coming second in The Hague is that it is the seat of the Dutch government and royal family, and the home to many institutions, such as the International Court of Justice. This was the party’s first outing in local elections, and it only contested these constituencies because of a lack of resources.