The process of cabinet formation in The Netherlands is almost complete. Geert Wilders is overseeing the negotiations, but he will not be prime minister — part of the price of the PVV being in charge of the process is that Mr. Wilders will have to forgo being PM.

Our Dutch correspondent H. Numan has the report.

Habemus pap…

by H. Numan

No, not habemus papam. We don’t know who the new prime minister will be, yet. But the Dutch cabinet formation seems to be concluded. We will have a new cabinet soon. It looks good, much better than I expected. This is the beginning of the end for woke policies. Windmills? That’s nice for tourists. The new cabinet plans to stop subsidizing ‘clean’ energy, and build four nuclear reactors instead. Take that, left-wing wokies! Our gas fields will not be closed, after all. There is plenty of it left, despite all progressive propaganda.

• Immigration will be severely curtailed. No more endless appeals. If a court rejects an application, you’re out.
• Likewise, forty-year-olds claiming to be minors have to pay for their own medical (and very expensive) investigation.
• No more preferential treatment for asylum seekers in housing.
• Sending your kids first, to facilitate the rest of the family, is over.
• No Nexit, but at least a big finger to Brussels: the cabinet will reserve the right to manage refugees nationally.
• When you’re out, you’re going back. The cabinet wants to put an end to simply releasing deportees out of an asylum center to fend for themselves. That happens today, everywhere in Europe. People who should be deported out of the country aren’t. They are turned loose on the streets to do whatever they want. Much cheaper than deporting.
• Something that worries me is regulating the Adhan, the mohammedan call to prayer. That probably comes from our f[r]iend Pieter Omtzigt. So far mosques can broadcast the call to prayer as loud and often as they dare. Regulating that is in my opinion not only legalizing it but a gateway for more. To see how far they can go, a challenge they happily accept.
• Housing has always been a huge problem in The Netherlands. When I was looking for a house in the early eighties, the wait time was twelve years. Woke policies make it now completely unavailable. The house I bought back then was recently sold for no less than twenty times the price I paid for it. Not a mansion, not in a fancy neighborhood. Not a prime investment. Just a decent fixer-upper house in a run of the mill street. I can well understand the complaint of younger people they can’t afford a house. The cabinet plans to build 100,000 houses annually.
• The public broadcasters have to tighten their belts. The cabinet will stop the endless supply of free money. Same for civil servants: they get 22% less of a budget.
• Farmers can rest assured, which is to be expected with the Farmer’s Party (BBB) in the cabinet. Woke nonsense, such as nitrogen limits, is gone. Farming is a decent profession, to be proud of. And will remain so.

That in a nutshell is what has been agreed about. Now the big question:

How long will it last?

That’s a tough one to answer, as there is not yet a cabinet. The big fight at this moment is over who will be the new PM. The first candidate was Ronald Plasterk. He’s a very popular (left & right) labor politician. However, Plasterk is proposed by Geert Wilders; we (the establishment) can’t have that. Immediately after he was proposed they set the system against him. Mr. Plasterk is involved in a copyright scandal. A woke young lawyer filed another suit. Omtzigt demanded (and got!) his formal apologies for telling the world he behaved like a three-year-old toddler during the negotiations. The media (they are in for a military haircut) are going all out in denouncing Plasterk, and succeeded. After all that pressure Plasterk withdrew himself.

You see a coincidence here? All important progressive groups are already up in arms to derail a cabinet that isn’t there yet. Them grapes sure are sour!

The leaders of the left — namely Frans Timmermans and Yasser Feras (Jesse Klaver), both PvdA-GL — whine like air raid sirens. Only louder. This is, according to our daft duo, going to be a real fascist cabinet. The worst that could have happened. Hitler is back, that sort of nonsense. The people elected the wrong parties, they should have voted for them. Conveniently forgetting it was them that got us into this mess.

Omtzigt isn’t as stupid as he behaves. Yes, if people don’t do what he wants, he throws a temper tantrum. But only in private and only with his peers. Never in public. He has his own candidate for PM, why not go for him? I doubt very much if Wilders will silly enough to do that. He might as well call this cabinet the Omtzigt-1 cabinet.

In short: anyone even remotely supportive of Wilders is taken to the cleaners. Most capable and decent alternatives refuse to enter this pit of doom. Only highly ambitious and probably not-so-capable candidates are available.

No matter

Remember what they said about Louis XVIII? “He learned nothing and forgot nothing.” That’s what’s going on right now. Woke is behaving exactly like that king. Instead of tuning it down, they turn it up. Which is fine by me.

This cabinet is not going to last long, and cannot change a lot. It can only begin cleaning the Augean Stable. It’ll take years to do that. That will happen in the next cabinet, which will be Wilders-1. That’s the dilemma for Woke: they can make this cabinet impossible. They are already trying to do that.

But… that will only lead to new elections, where the current line continues. The PVV has 37 seats at the moment. If this cabinet fails, I expect it to get close to 60. So let them do their worst. Have their fun. The last laugh is on us!

— H. Numan

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