The politics of emotion: we are poorer without Pieter Omtzigt

Pieter Omtzigt never wanted his new party to be too big. Before the last election – with the good people of the Netherlands shocked by 40,000 parents incorrectly stamped as childcare benefit fraudsters and Groningen’s earthquakes ignored in the scavenge for gas – at one point, New Social Contract was leading the polls. It’s the fate of many protest parties to catch the wind of the national mood and then collapse. This happened to Pim Fortuyn’s LPF, to the AOV...