Dutch government on brink of collapse after Wilders' far-right party quits | Reuters

yes, but leading here doesn't mean much, given how small the biggest party is in actual numbers. All it takes is for the reasonable parts of society to exclude these folks from coalitions. They're not big enough that they can't be ignored. It's worked for many years, lets return to that.

I think it's too early to say how this will impact the polls. A lot of people are still processing what happened. Blowing up the government over immigration didn't work out great for the VVD (liberal right), but perhaps Wilders' party will fare better.

It was the protest vote that won the PVV (Wilders' party) the last election and the BBB (farmers' party) the Eerste Kamer (Senate) elections before that. Now that the PVV and the BBB have been in the government and achieved basically nothing, those voters are more likely to vote for left-leaning parties or stay home.

If Wilders can push the narrative that the rest of the coalition forced his hand by blocking his immigration policies, perhaps he can win the election. However, considering that even the FvD was criticizing Wilders today that might be a tall order, even in the alt-right bubble.

If Groen Links/PVDA (green/labour alliance) can convince protest voters that the solution to their problems is to tax the rich and invest that money in social programs and environmental policies, maybe they can win the elections.

(Winning the elections in this context means becoming the largest party. Nobody ever gets an absolute majority.)

Wilders has been threatening to blow it up since day one. This coalition has been an uphill struggle from the get-go and none of the voters are in any way helped with the flailing policies and continuous notes that their official documents are lacking any semblance of professionalism and critical thought.

The sad thing is that we are a country divided on basically one issue. Migration. This is why populist parties can just ask simple questions like 'can we even trust our government?', 'are the government people even working?' or 'are the media still trustworthy?' and everyone is like 'yeah we need this guy in charge'. So voters do exactly 5 minutes of 'research' and then vote for the most incompetent guy who yells the loudest.

So we will go vote again. And we will most likely end up in a similar situation. And that, too, will fail.

It is always the same tactic:

1. If in opposition be as loud and obnoxious as you can, have the less far right parties implement your policies as you rise in the polls.
2. Rise even more in the polls as a result of your policies being implemented and the public discourse becoming more and more far right and get into a government coalition.
3. Blow up the coalition and suffer a bit in the polls.
4. Quickly recover in the years to come by repeating step one, just in a more right wing society
5. Rinse and repeat until you get absolute power.

Look at Austria, Poland, Hungary...

Fascists profit both from being in opposition, thanks to their less far-right enablers and they profit from a dysfunctional government in the long run.

Well, the main question is whether they'll be able to accomplish more as opposition. It wouldn't surprise me as they can, though at the same time, they're not as big a threat anymore now that it's clear that no party will want to govern with them anymore in the foreseeable future, so maybe whoever does get to govern feels less pressure to move in their direction. Until a new party arises, of course.

Can certainly make an argument for this.

Wasn't able to turn the government upside down the way as Orbán did, so back into opposition to be able to yell all you want and not have to show anything for it.

It's not a popular opinion in the Netherlands but I would like Volt to be bigger. If I read about their perfect Netherlands, I really can get behind that. The thing is that they do describe a utopia with a lot of impossible things that are going to cost a lot of money. But hey, we gotta start somewhere, right?

So for a long time the left has been struggling (like everywhere?) right before the previous elections the two biggest "left" parties merged. In the 2023 elections they were the second largest, after PVV. Let's see if this time it plays out well.