The Mixed Legacy of Pim Fortuyn

Fifteen years ago this weekend, the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn attended a radio interview in Hilversum, a small town not far from Amsterdam. There was just over a week to go until the 2002 national elections, and opinion polls showed that that Fortuyn’s party was on track to win a significant number of votes – so many, in fact, that he might even become Prime Minister of the Netherlands. After a lively discussion of his future career prospects, Fortuyn left the studio, ready for his next engagement. But as he strode towards his Jaguar, a young man stepped forward and shot him several times. Fortuyn bled to death in the car park.

For the Netherlands – a country where no leader had been assassinated since William of Orange, more than three centuries previously – the assassination was a landmark event in the country’s history; a crime so heinous as to be profoundly “un-Dutch”. Thousands filled the streets in tribute to Fortuyn, and a sea of flowers swept across the pavement in front of his house in Rotterdam. A decade and a half later, the shock has naturally faded, and commemorations of the anniversary are largely low-key. However, long after his death, Fortuyn’s legacy remains significant.

Most obviously, Fortuyn’s meteoric rise helped lay the foundations for a new kind of populism which was once rare, but now dominates headlines worldwide. Geert Wilders, for one, differs from Fortuyn in many ways, but is a clear ideological descendant. “Today we remember a great man”, Wilders tweeted on Saturday, before quoting Fortuyn on the “aggression of Islam”.

In today’s climate, it’s easy to forget just how revolutionary such populist sentiments once seemed. In the Netherlands, for much of the post-war era politics was sensible to the point of being utterly boring. Under the so-called ‘polder model’ of government, Dutch votes were usually split among a large number of political parties, and the Netherlands was run largely on the basis of compromise and negotiation. The convergence of major Dutch parties over several years made grand coalitions across the right/left divide possible, but also created a perception that nothing ever really changed. People who rose to the top in Dutch politics were usually boring technocrats rather than consensus-shattering Thatchers or Reagans.

In that context, Pim Fortuyn’s arrival on the scene was the political equivalent of a Groningen earthquake. He was flamboyant and outgoing; a snappy dresser with a soap-opera love life, who deliberately courted the media by saying things which others thought unsayable. “Ik zeg wat ik denk en ik doe wat ik zeg!” he liked to say. “I say what I think and I do what I say!” As tensions rose after 9/11, Fortuyn deftly exploited fears that the Netherlands was in decline and the Dutch had taken tolerance too far, looking the other way even as immigration undermined the very fabric of society. “This is a full country”, he once said. “I think 16 million Dutchmen are about enough.” Many Dutch were appalled by his views, but many others were thrilled: in March 2002, Fortuyn’s party stunned the establishment by winning more than a third of the vote in local elections in Rotterdam. Shortly afterwards, opinion polls showed that Fortuyn was among the front-runners to become the next Prime Minister, or at least secure a major role in a coalition government. Ultimately, history intervened and prevented that happening – but fifteen years on, it’s hard not to conclude that much Dutch political debate – including the recent Wilders-dominated election campaign – is still conducted in Fortuyn’s shadow. He was a populist before it was popular to be one.

Fortuyn’s other great legacy was to reset the parameters for political debate in the Netherlands. In almost every country, there are certain red lines which any sensible politician would never dare to cross. In America, for example, it’s all but impossible for prospective leaders to criticise the military, while in Britain it’s career suicide for a politician to express anything less than a deep love for the National Health Service. In general, the positions of these red lines are well-established along party lines: politicians who take a conservative stance on economic issues also take a conservative stance on social issues. Conservative Republicans and French National Fronters who aren’t keen on open borders and free trade are also not usually big fans of gay marriage.  In the Netherlands, issues relating to race and immigration were long considered well over the red line – newspapers were restricted from reporting the race of criminal suspects, and any politician who criticised immigration risked a firestorm of criticism. Dutch tolerance only went so far.

Fortuyn, though, helped completely redefine those parameters, taking a strong right-wing stance on some issues while remaining very liberal on others.  Crucially, he argued that his own intolerance of Islam was a means of safeguarding Dutch tolerance: when a Dutch imam famously said that homosexuals were “pigs”, Fortuyn said that the imam had a right to voice that opinion – but that Fortuyn himself also had a right to say that the imam’s religion was “backward” or “retarded”. Media interviews would move seamlessly from discussions of how much Fortuyn hated radical Islam to how much he enjoyed pursuing young men in Rotterdam’s gay bars. “I don’t hate Arab men – I even sleep with them”, he said. For all his outspokenness, the red lines which Fortuyn drew were clear: criticism of immigrants or Islam was fair game, but hostility towards gays, transsexuals, drug users, divorced people or single parents was beyond the pale. Nearly a generation later, these red lines still exist – Geert Wilders is happy to stand trial for promoting hatred against Moroccans, but staunchly defends gay rights. This careful straddling of fences also helps explain why Fortuyn’s reputation has survived relatively intact: in contrast with people like the Le Pens, he’s often remembered as someone whose views were controversial rather than hateful.

Looking back, it’s impossible to guess what might have happened had Fortuyn lived and won the elections. Looking around today’s Netherlands, and surveying its political scene, one suspects he would not approve. Yet whatever one’s politics, it’s fairly certain that if Fortuyn had risen to power, many of his cheerleaders would have turned against him sooner or later. In the worst case, his anti-immigrant policies might have been taken to their logical, Trumpian conclusion: discrimination and deportations on the polder. In the best case, a Prime Minister Fortuyn might have stayed true to his better instincts, but still ended up disappointing those who hoped he’d deliver radical change, just as every other inspiring leader from Blair to Obama (and, soon, Emmanuel Macron) inevitably does. Either way, to many Rotterdammers, he remains an iconic figure: a kind of Dutch Princess Diana, about whom it’s impossible to say a bad word.

The Trouble With Dutch Democracy

After months of reading, writing and talking about the Dutch elections, I was in a car crash just before polling day, and missed the whole thing. When the polls opened I was lying unconscious in a hospital bed, and when they closed I was entombed in an MRI scanner. When the results came in, I could barely lift my head to register them on the television screen.

In the end, though, it didn’t matter much. After months of wild speculation, the results were largely as expected: Mark Rutte, the incumbent Prime Minister, was rewarded with the biggest share of the vote; the left-leaning Labour Party (PvdA) collapsed; and a cluster of smaller parties enjoyed picking up the pieces. The far-right nationalist Geert Wilders fared reasonably well, but had done such a good job of offending everyone beforehand that there was no chance of him getting into government. At the time of writing, coalition negotiations are barely past the “let’s talk about talking” phase, but Rutte’s VVD is set to stay in the driving seat, leading a motley crew of D66 liberals, GroenLinks left-wingers and Christian Democrats. It typically takes about ten weeks for a Dutch coalition to form, but in effect, the outcome will be business as usual: a compromising, centrist, reasonably competent government which most people can safely ignore.

Although unexciting, this outcome was exactly what many people had hoped for; a solid defeat of the populists who’d threatened a ‘Nexit’ to follow ‘Brexit’. Angela Merkel said the outcome was a “good day for democracy”, while Francois Hollande said it represented a “clear victory against extremism”. However, those celebrating the death of populism might be wise to put the champagne on ice for a while. I’ve written previously about the sudden demise of the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA), and the question of whether the Dutch left can bounce back from a bad result, or will instead (like the UK Labour Party) continue to spin as aimlessly as an untethered windmill. It now seems that a variation of the same problem faces the Netherlands as a whole: how best to respond to a narrow victory over populism, and ensure that Wilders doesn’t bounce back in the future?

These are hard questions to answer, but a couple of things are clear. Firstly, it’s clear that in many ways, the Dutch political system is a stitch-up. A proportional voting system and coalition governments are not without their benefits, and have helped build a stable social democracy where the rights of minorities are strongly protected. But the fact that all Dutch governments are coalitions also means that the social contract between voters and politicians often seems more like a disappointing polygamous fling than a stable marriage. People might vote enthusiastically for a party which (say) promises to build a bridge between Den Haag and Haarlem, but they also know that the bridge will probably never get built – after the election, party power-brokers will meet in private to agree compromise policies which don’t massively offend anyone, but don’t really please anyone either. This endless splitting of differences is one reason why Wilders’ populism is popular. In a system where no-one ever gets exactly what they vote for, and where governing is done by back-room negotiation, it’s easy to argue that the whole system is rigged in favour of the elite.

In that context, there’s a risk that Wilders’ recent result might make things worse. Thousands of Dutch voters backed Wilders in part because they liked his anti-establishment message. If the establishment’s response is to assemble a wobbly multi-coloured coalition which includes almost everyone but Wilders, they risk effectively proving his point; confirming (in the eyes of the populists) that the system is rigged to exclude anyone who doesn’t fit in with the crowd at Davos. Wilders’ supporters, having been told for months that they were in with a real shot at seizing power, are unlikely to go gently into the night, and may become more angry and alienated than ever.

It’s also clear that the major parties need to find new voices and new policies which can appeal to those who feel ignored. If the Dutch mainstream fails to do this, they risk going down the same road as their counterparts in United States; where discontent with the governing elite was left to bubble under the surface for years before exploding volcanically in last year’s election. There were many reasons for Donald Trump’s victory, but one was the abject failure of the Democrats to find a presidential candidate who could appeal to voters who felt trampled rather than rewarded by globalisation. In the Netherlands, the situation is far less extreme. There’s plenty of space for fringe voices in politics, and it’s hard to portray Wilders – a well-educated professional politician – as an authentic ‘man of the people’. The elevation of the thirty-year-old Dutch-Moroccan-Indonesian Jesse Klaver to within grasping distance of a cabinet seat also seems like a step in the right direction. However, it’s notable that the leaders of the seven largest parties in parliament are all men who have spent most of their working lives in politics. It’s easy to see why a blue-collar worker in Rotterdam might feel little affinity with centrist, managerial leaders like Rutte and his new allies, who speak fluent IMF and look like the kind of guy who fires you.

To be clear: I think that Geert Wilders is wrong about most things. In my opinion, his narrow-mindedness goes against the instincts – openness, internationalism, tolerance, creativity –  which have made the Netherlands so successful, and his foreign policies are reckless and impulsive in a way which make Donald Trump look like a great statesman. However, during the election, Wilders was right to argue that the Dutch economy has performed unimpressively. Like Trump, he was right to point that while many people have benefited from globalisation and free movement of labour, many others have not. Above all, he was also right to argue that the voices of the left-behind are too easily ignored by those for whom immigrants (as I crudely put it in my book) are “more likely to give them a good price for retiling the bathroom than to take their job”.

Whatever the eventual shape of the new government, one must hope that they don’t simply kick the can further down the road, mock or belittle the populists, and revel in their narrow victory. Instead, they should make a concerted effort to understand and address the concerns of the millions who flirted with populism. If not, the next election will simply be a re-run of the last one, and could be even closer. Wilders’ tone and his policies may be poisonous, but on one or two critical issues, he was right to raise warning flags. Even a broken clock is right sometimes.

The trouble with the Netherlands and Turkey

Two days ago, the Dutch election campaign seemed to have all but run its course. Some still feared a surprise upset, but overall a strange sense of calm had descended: with Prime Minister Mark Rutte rising in the polls, and the populist Geert Wilders sinking, politics had ceased to be front-page news. This weekend, however, saw a series of dramatic upsets: crowds rioting in Rotterdam, foreign politicians deported, and the Dutch government both accused of trampling on human rights and praised for defending them.

As has been widely reported, the trouble was sparked when the Dutch government, citing security concerns, blocked an attempt by the Turkish Foreign Minister to hold a rally in Rotterdam, as part of a campaign to strengthen the powers of the already-authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. What should have been a minor diplomatic squabble over the cancelled event quickly spiralled out of control, with the Turkish government threatening to impose sanctions, the Turkish Foreign Minister saying the Netherlands was the “capital of fascism” and Erdogan himself saying the Dutch were “Nazi remnants”. When the Turkish Foreign Minister’s plane was refused permission to land in the Netherlands another Turkish minister tried to travel overland to Rotterdam from Germany, but had her convoy stopped by Dutch police at a petrol station, and was forced to drive back over the border. By Saturday evening, President Erdogan’s supporters were protesting violently outside the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam. Crowds of mostly young men threw bottles and rocks at police, who pushed back with baton charges, dogs and water cannon. Twelve people reportedly were arrested and seven injured. Amid the broken bottles and hurled bricks, an election which had started to look like a foregone conclusion suddenly looked anything but.

Ties between the Netherlands and Turkey have always been unusually close, thanks in part to the large number of Turks who live in cities like Rotterdam. Turkish immigrants began to arrive in the country in significant numbers in the late 1960s and 1970s. The Netherlands’ post-war economic boom created a demand for labour that the local population could not meet, and the Dutch government responded by encouraging the recruitment of so-called ‘guest workers’ from lower-income countries on the fringes of Europe, including Morocco and Turkey.
Thousands came to work in Dutch dockyards, factories and building sites; living in cheap boarding houses, working hard, saving harder and making long car journeys to visit their home countries each summer. The government assumed that the ‘guest workers’ would be exactly that – guests who came on a short-term basis – but it quickly became clear that many planned to stay permanently.
By 2016, the Netherlands – a country of fewer than seventeen million people – was home to 400,000 people of Turkish descent, including around 40,000 in Rotterdam alone. Despite the Dutch government’s introduction of tougher immigration rules, the Turkish population continued to grow over time – between 2000 and 2015, the number of Turks living in the Netherlands increased by 27 per cent.

The conventional wisdom in the Netherlands is that the country’s Turkish immigrants are a modest success story: relatively well-integrated, with educational attainment and unemployment rates which compare favourably with other ethnic groups. In cities like Rotterdam many successful businesses are run by Dutch-Turkish entrepreneurs, and there’s even a national political party (‘Denk’) lead by two Turkish MPs. Statistically, Turks in the Netherlands are socioeconomically better off than other minorities, and less likely to commit or be suspected of crimes. Promisingly, the employment rate of second-generation Turks (that is, children of immigrants from Turkey) is higher than that of the first generation, suggesting integration is improving over time. In less politically-correct circles, it’s common to hear stark comparisons being made between Dutch Turks and Dutch Moroccans: around Rotterdam, the crude racial stereotype says that Turks are educated, secular, socially liberal and hard-working, while Moroccans are said to be lazier and more inclined to commit crimes and hold hard-line Islamic views. Geert Wilders regularly speaks out against Turkish membership of the EU, but it’s probably no coincidence that when his language turns darker and he starts threatening mass deportations, he’s usually talking about Moroccans rather than Turks.

Of course, between the crass stereotypes there are many shades of grey – Moroccans who are well-integrated and successful, Turks who are more devout than their Moroccan neighbours, and Dutch Muslims who believe strongly in gender equality, freedom of speech and the right to enjoy a glass or six of Heineken. However, it’s also fair to say that the Dutch Turkish community is not without its problems. Unemployment among Turks in the Netherlands nearly doubled between 2002 and 2012, and Turks are roughly three times as likely to be criminal suspects than the native Dutch. Turkish girls in particular lag far behind their Dutch peers at school; and nearly a quarter of young Turkish and Moroccan men are what the British would call ‘NEET’ – not in education, employment or training. Turkish people in the Netherlands are also perhaps not as well integrated as some statistics imply – compared with other minorities like Antilleans and Surinamese, Turks are less likely to marry Dutch citizens and more likely to marry within their own communities. In the book which I wrote about the Netherlands, I wrote of my own surprise at how common it was in Rotterdam to meet Turks who had lived in the Netherlands for years but spoke little or no Dutch, and fraternised only within their own communities. According to one Dutch government review of differences between ethnic groups in the Netherlands: “Turks have the strongest focus on their own group. Turks often feel especially Turkish, have fewer contacts outside their own group, often use media from the country of origin and have little interest in Dutch politics.” Compared to other minorities, the Dutch Turks’ troubles may be slight, but their integration in Rotterdam is also not quite as smooth as some cheerleaders claim. A city which initially looks like a proverbial melting pot of ethnicities often turns out to be more like the baklava sold in local shops: lots of colourful layers which sit neatly side by side but never mix.

Recent years have also seen emergence of some troubling tensions between the Dutch authorities and parts of the Turkish community. Dutch politicians’ hard-line rhetoric on immigration and Islam has understandably offended many migrants, while the rise of more conservative strains of Islam within Turkish politics has coloured relations between the two countries. In 2013, for example, Erdogan strongly objected to the adoption of a Turkish child by a lesbian Dutch couple, accusing the Dutch state of mistreating the child by exposing him to homosexual influences. More recently, the Dutch and Turks have diverged over whether to support Kurdish fighters in the battle against Islamic State, and a deal whereby the Turks effectively agreed to control the flow of refugees into Europe has begun looking increasingly shaky.
As Erdogan jails opponents, detains journalists and centralises power, the Netherlands finds itself increasingly at odds with its former ally. The Turkish government long prided itself on its ability to act as a moderate ‘bridge’ between the Middle East and Europe, but the recent change in tone has been striking. Last week, for example, a delegation of American journalists visiting Ankara were treated to a mayoral presentation claiming that the U.S. and Israel had colluded to artificially trigger an earthquake in Turkey so that they could capture energy from within the fault line. A Turkish minister tweeted yesterday that her country was demonstrating what “a true democracy” looks like, but the truth is that President Erdogan is rapidly turning into the Vladimir Putin of the Middle East; a corrupt ‘big man’ who tolerates no dissent.

Within the Netherlands, the big question is of course what impact the latest dispute will have on the election. As Prime Minister, Mark Rutte has faced a delicate balancing act this weekend – trying to stand up for his country without destroying the unity of NATO, and trying to appease right-wing critics without alienating left-leaning voters. As the spat intensified, Rutte pledged to do whatever he could to “de-escalate” tensions, but the fear of losing votes to Wilders has been evident in his populist rhetoric. “The Netherlands”, Rutte said after Turkey threatened sanctions, “is a proud nation. We can never do business under those sorts of threats and blackmail”. Asked later if he’d apologise to the Turks, Rutte replied: “Are you nuts?”

A cynic might think that a dispute with a Muslim country was just what Rutte needed right now: a perfect opportunity to demonstrate that he’s willing to take a tough stance in defence of Dutch values. Most centrist commentators agree that Rutte has made the best of a bad situation, but among people who tweet angrily about such things, opinion is more divided: some say the Prime Minister shamefully trampled on cherished Dutch principles of free speech, while others say the whole saga proves that the Netherlands is at war with Islam and that Rutte’s centrist policies have failed. In a messy, fragmented election, it’s difficult to map what the overall impact will be. Will moderate Turks who disliked Rutte’s immigration policies now back him because he fought with Erdogan? Or will pro-Erdogan Turks vote strategically to force Rutte from office? Will centrist voters shocked by violence in the streets take a second look at liberal, left-leaning parties who preach a softer line on immigration? Or will floating centrists decide that enough is enough, and the Netherlands’ tolerant attitude to immigration and Islam has gone too far?

No-one really knows, but it’s safe to assume that news footage of angry young Muslim men fighting with police is helpful to Wilders. Predictably, the blonde bombshell has been quick to do his best to make a bad situation worse, tweeting that “all Turks in the Netherlands who agree with Erdogan” should “go to Turkey and never come back.” Yesterday, as police maintained a defensive line around the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam and pro-Erdogan stickers were chiselled from tram stops, a small plane was seen circling overhead, trailing a long banner encouraging locals to vote for Wilders’ party.
Like the banner, the dispute over the cancelled visit will likely blow over, but it’s hard not to see the broken bottles and toxic talk as yet another sign that the Netherlands is not quite the island of tolerance and tranquillity that it used to be.

The Sudden Death of the Dutch Labour Party

With only ten days until voting begins, the Dutch elections are still a pollster’s nightmare. Will the ‘Party for the Animals’ pull off a surprise victory? Or will the ‘50 Plus’ party for pensioners finally get its chance to shake up the Dutch parliament? In a fragmented system where coalitions are the norm, no-one really knows.

In the international media (and on this website) most of the attention remains focused on one man: Geert Wilders, the lion-haired Trumpian scaremonger who’s set for his best-ever election performance. However, the probability of Wilders ending up in power is low, and there’s a risk that a bigger story is being neglected: the near-total collapse of the Dutch left.

For decades, the Dutch Labour Party (Partij van de Arbeid, or PvdA) has been one of Europe’s great left-wing political parties; producing several Prime Ministers and typically holding between a quarter and a third of seats in parliament. Since 2012, the PvdA has been a coalition partner in government, and currently holds major cabinet seats including the Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Finance Minister. Now, though, the PvdA suddenly finds itself staring into the abyss. Polls predict that the party’s share of the vote will slump to perhaps a quarter of its previous level, and that it will lose around 70 percent of its seats in parliament.
With the PvdA set to go from being the second-largest party in the Netherlands to the seventh, its leader, Lodewijk Asscher, doesn’t risk overstating things when he says “there’s room for improvement.”

So why is the PvdA doing so badly?

Firstly, the party’s woes reflect the fact that Dutch elections are becoming increasingly competitive. As the big parties have faltered, smaller ones have sprung up around them, stealing shares of the vote like birds pecking at a carcass. In the mid-1980s, the three largest parties in the Netherlands won about ninety percent of the seats in parliament. By 2012 that figure had fallen to about sixty percent, and this year is likely to fall below fifty percent. With more than a dozen parties now competing for seats, behemoths like the PvdA are naturally struggling to preserve their support. On the left, smaller parties are set to do rather well. The liberal ‘D66’ party is headed for its best election performance since the early 1990s, while the ‘GroenLinks’ (Green Left) leader Jesse Klaver is also doing well, thanks to (or perhaps despite) ham-fisted efforts to rebrand himself as a Dutch Justin Trudeau. The arrival of fresh faces may be welcome – but it also means that the Netherlands, a country famed for its liberal values, risks being stuck with no clear leadership on the left of the spectrum.

Secondly, the PvdA is also suffering from a case of what the Brits might call the Lib Dem effect. The PvdA has spent the last five years propping up a centre-right prime minister, Mark Rutte, who’s implemented a typical centre-right austerity agenda: cutting government spending, introducing stricter immigration policies and taking a tougher line on law and order. PvdA leaders defend their record in government, saying they’ve helped rein in right-wing excesses while fixing the Netherlands’ fragile economy. But to many of the PvdA’s traditional supporters, it seems more like the party has sold out its principles in order to enjoy the trappings of high office. As The Economist magazine once put it, the PvdA has “lost support on the left by governing in the centre”.

A third problem is that the PvdA has been losing the support of many ethnic minority voters. Traditionally, the party’s pro-immigration, pro-poor policies helped it hoover up votes from minorities, including the substantial Turkish and Moroccan populations which live in places like Rotterdam. One might think that the rise of Geert Wilders, who noisily abuses immigrants whenever a camera appears, would boost support for parties trying to defend minorities, including the PvdA. In fact, the opposite seems to have happened. In an increasingly polarised atmosphere, many minority voters have broken with the PvdA in favour of more left-wing parties. In 2014, two Turkish MPs, aghast at the governing coalition’s immigration policies, broke away from the PvdA altogether, quitting to form their own party. The party, one of the MPs said, had become like “an inverted car wash, where you go in clean and come out dirty”.

Fourthly, the collapse of the PvdA also reflects a broader decline in the fortunes of left-wing parties across Europe. Broadly speaking, the left had a good run in the 1990s under leaders like Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroder, but then made itself unpopular by introducing spending cuts which appalled traditional supporters. At the same time, centre-right leaders like David Cameron began pinching some of the left’s most popular policies: school reform, minimum wages, environmental protection and gay marriage. Simultaneously, far-right populists like Wilders began stealing voters from the left’s traditional base, with promises to cut immigration, cut taxes, and take back control from the governing elites. As a result, the Dutch PvdA aren’t the only leftists in trouble – France’s Socialists are about to lose power, Italy’s Matteo Renzi has been forced to resign, and the UK Labour Party is in an abysmal state. In the US, the Democrats are also still reeling from a crushing defeat. As the commentator René Cuperus put it, social democrats in the Netherlands and elsewhere find themselves stuck as “neither opponent nor engine”, unable to disagree strongly with much of what the government does, but also unable to articulate a significantly better way of doing things.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the PvdA’s problems are rooted in its failure to respond to the challenge posed by populists. As Geert Wilders’ arguments have gained traction, Prime Minister Mark Rutte has steadily shifted his rhetoric rightwards, saying (for example) that a Dutch-Turkish protester should “go back to Turkey.” This shift has horrified some people, but it’s not unpopular: most polls show Rutte gaining ground on Wilders. In contrast, the left-leaning PvdA has often appeared to be suffering from an identity crisis, simultaneously pledging traditional left-wing policies (higher taxes on the rich) while also clumsily pandering to the right (clamping down on free movement within the EU). This week, former PvdA leader Wouter Bos said that the party was “terribly oriented” on policy, and that Geert Wilders had a better understanding of Dutch workers’ anger than those on the left. Bos was criticised for his comments, but he was right.

It’s still not impossible that the PvdA might pull a late rabbit out of the hat, and do unexpectedly well in the elections. However, that looks very unlikely. A large proportion of former PvdA voters now say they either don’t know who to vote for, or won’t bother voting at all. Perhaps the biggest question, though, is how the PvdA will react to a disappointing result. Can the party find new leaders who are more in tune with the public mood? Can they develop new policies which win back disillusioned ethnic minorities voters and blue-collar workers, while also appealing to urban liberals? Can they return to government without further compromising their values? Or will they, like UK Labour Party, keep marching down the road to oblivion?

The strange alliance of Europe’s far-right

A few weeks ago, Europe’s far-right leaders gathered in the German city of Koblenz. Taking turns to speak in front of an invited audience of supporters, Frauke Petry of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), Marine Le Pen of France’s Front National, Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) and Matteo Salvini of Italy’s Northern League jointly pledged to curb immigration and “Make Our Countries Great Again”. Marine Le Pen encouraged downtrodden French and German voters to “free ourselves from the chains of the European Union”, while Geert Wilders declared in fluent German that “Europe needs a strong Germany… that stands for its culture, identify and civilisation”. As enthusiastic crowds chanted Nazi-era insults about the “lügenpresse” (“lying press”), Wilders and others did their best to bask in Donald Trump’s reflected glory. “Yesterday a new America”, the blonde bombshell said. “Today, a new Europe”.

Viewed from afar, the whole spectacle was more absurd than menacing. Wilders, in particular, seemed to be doing his best to win a role in a film adaptation of a Kafka novel: making a visa-free trip across international borders to speak in another language about the urgent need to close Europe’s borders. However, the participants obviously saw things differently. Conference organisers argued that the event wasn’t just about creating PR opportunities, but about setting out a “joint vision for a Europe of freedom”. “Each of us”, Le Pen told journalists, “is strongly attached to sovereignty and freedom in general [and united] in a rejection of the European Union’s laissez-faire policies”. To many journalists covering the conference, the implication was clear: far-right parties are not isolated phenomena, but part of a global, world-changing trend; Wilders, Le Pen, Trump and Farage members of a rebel alliance seeking to destroy the current world order. As one American headline put it, “Europe Is Horrified of Trump, But He’d Fit Right In”.

In reality, though, Europe’s far-right is rather less united than it seems. Despite a mutual dislike of Islam and of the EU, parties like Le Pen’s FN and Wilders’ PVV share almost as many differences as they do similarities. Le Pen has, for example, pledged to end gay marriages, while Wilders has attended pro-gay rights rallies. Le Pen’s party continues to flirt with anti-semitism, while Wilders is a staunch supporter of Israel. And while Wilders has praised free trade in his previous election manifestos, Le Pen says that Trump’s policies are already proving that “protectionism works”. As I pointed out in a recent interview, it’s hard to imagine many of Wilders’ far-right friends agreeing with him that the main problem with immigration from Muslim countries is that it threatens “the decay of our cherished values [such as] the equality of men and women, freedom of opinion and speech [and] tolerance of homosexuality”.

Wilders’ position in the rebel alliance is also odd because of the national context in which he operates, and the places where he draws his support from. In the four centuries after it won independence from Spain, the Netherlands rose to become one of the world’s wealthiest countries largely through its openness to the wider world; making up for its small size and lack of national resources by serving as the trading crossroads of northern Europe. Even today, in the era of e-commerce and 3D printers, one of the biggest engines driving the Dutch economy is still the port of Rotterdam, which handles more trade each year than Southampton, Bruges, Felixstowe and Genoa combined. In that context, it’s surprising to see that support for Wilders seems strongest in the very places (like Rotterdam) where people have gained most from an open, internationalist free-trading system, and have the most to lose if Trumpian walls and trade barriers go up. That people would vote against their own economic interest is no longer surprising, but it’s strange.

Finally, it’s also important to note that (as I’ve written in the past) the true level of support for the far-right remains very hard to measure. In the Netherlands, Wilders is currently enjoying his day in the sun, but polls show that support for his ideas appears to be sliding. While his party is still likely to make a strong showing in the elections, it’s hard to envisage an outcome whereby other parties agree to support a Wilders-led coalition government. Referring to Moroccans as “scum” may have pleased many of his followers on Twitter, but it’s unlikely to win over floating voters who are worried about rocking the boat. This week’s much-publicised trip by Wilders to the Rotterdam port satellite of Spijkenisse was notable mainly for the fact that the journalists and bodyguards following Wilders far outnumbered his supporters.

The results of the Brexit referendum and Trump election mean we’re now primed to expect the unexpected, but it’s also worth remembering the times when support for far-right has fizzled out in the past. When I worked in UK politics, for example, politicians and advisers suffered from a widespread terror that the extremist British National Party was on the verge of upending the balance of power. In the end, the party sank without a trace. More recently, in 2015, UKIP dominated the British political news in the same way that Wilders now dominates the Dutch press. In the end, they won only one seat in parliament, which was held by a defector from the Conservatives who barely bothered to hide his dislike of Nigel Farage.

In many countries, the same anti-establishment trends which have cheered the far-right are now also boosting support for left-wingers. In France, for example, the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron is attracting support from millions of voters looking for a “none of the above” option, and might actually win the Presidency. In the Netherlands, the polls are as turbulent as ever, but the most likely outcome is still that the boringly competent current Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, returns to power supported by a motley crew of leftish leaders. It’s certainly possible that Europe could be torn apart this year by a President Le Pen and Prime Minister Wilders. But it’s also possible that a French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Martin Schulz and Dutch Prime Minister Rutte could end up working together to quickly refurbish a damaged and dented Europe. In that case, 2017 could indeed be – as Marine Le Pen predicts – “the year when the people of continental Europe wake up”.

Could Geert Wilders win the Dutch elections?

In 1982, a man called Tom Bradley ran for Governor of California. He was a strong candidate: a pro-business Democrat who used to be a police officer and was now a successful Mayor of Los Angeles. In the weeks leading up to the vote, most polls showed Bradley on course to win a comfortable victory over his Republican opponent, a lawyer called George Deukmejian. On the day of the election itself, exit polls also confirmed Bradley would win; the San Francisco Chronicle began printing papers with headlines declaring he’d be Governor. Yet as the votes were counted, the Bradley campaign’s victory celebrations were abruptly put on hold. After hours of waiting, the shock final result was called: 49% for Deukmejian and 48% for Bradley. California would not get its first black Governor after all.

In the wake of Bradley’s defeat, most experts agreed
what had happened: when interviewed by pollsters, a significant number of voters effectively had lied about who they planned to vote for. Nine out ten people who’d told pollsters they were ‘undecided’ ended up voting against Bradley. The implication was clear: afraid of being thought racist, white voters had implied they’d be happy to vote for the black candidate, when actually they were unwilling to do so.

Thirty-five years after Bradley’s shock defeat, Dutch voters are slowly gearing up to go to the polls in March. Currently, all eyes are on the wild card: Geert Wilders, the bouffant-haired far-right leader who promises to ‘Make the Netherlands Great Again’. Like Trump, Wilders makes a habit of grabbing headlines with outrageous statements: calling for headscarves to be banned, comparing the Koran with Mein Kampf, and blaming Angela Merkel for the recent attack in Berlin. Last month, in a fascinating example of the limits of Dutch tolerance, Wilders was convicted of hate speech after calling for Moroccans to be deported. Many find his views abhorrent, but they’re not unpopular: some polls say Wilders could win over 25% of the vote; more than any other party.

As with Trump, many people assume that Wilders won’t actually be able to translate this support into power; blocked by either a lack of votes of a lack of allies willing to form a coalition with him. Foreign observers in particular often seem to assume that while the sensible, down-to-earth Dutch might enjoy a bit of bellyaching about immigration and ISIS, and find Wilders’ antics amusing, they would never actually let him run the country. In that context, one can’t help but wonder: could we see some variation of the Bradley effect in the Netherlands? Like patients lying to a doctor about how much alcohol they drink, might Dutch voters who say they oppose Wilders actually end up supporting him?

Others are better qualified than me to haggle over the technical details of polls, sampling errors and late swings. However, there are plenty of reasons to think that Wilders’ prospects might be under-rated. The current Prime Minister, Mark Rutte is seen as competent but rather uninspiring, and many voters are understandably sympathetic to the idea of a more colourful leader who says what he thinks and does what he says. The Dutch economy has had a bumpy ride over the past few years, and concern about issues like immigration has been growing. Against that backdrop, Wilders has positioned himself as the only man who can break the cosy consensus and turn the country around; trying to build a coalition which includes both working-class voters who feel threatened economically, and traditional conservatives nostalgic for the Netherlands of old. Some of his rhetoric is toxic, but in other ways, he’s been careful to appeal to values which Dutch liberals hold dear – arguing, for example, that Islam is wrong because of the way it oppresses women.

It’s also worth remembering that Dutch nationalism isn’t a fleeting phenomenon. While Nigel Farage has tried and failed to win a seat in the British parliament seven times, Wilders has held a Dutch seat for years. Wilders’ popularity has varied from one election to another, but his Partij voor de Vrijheid (Freedom Party), which was only created a decade ago, now has fifteen seats in parliament – an achievement which UKIP can only dream of. Crucially, Wilders has also proved capable of mobilising voters who would otherwise stay at home: in previous elections, it’s been estimated that 40 percent of the people who voted for him usually wouldn’t have voted at all.

Mark Rutte has responded to Wilders by shifting his own rhetoric rightwards; saying that he “hated” the idea of a multicultural society, and that people who disagreed with democratic values should “get out of here [and] go back to Turkey”. This kind of talk seems to be popular these days, and the most likely outcome of the election is that Rutte keeps his job. But Wilders’ effect on the debate has already been profound. In a political system where votes are split across many parties, and where coalition governments are the norm, there’s a real chance that he could end up in power; if not as Prime Minister, then with a seat at the cabinet table. It’s also worth remembering that the Netherlands has a track record of disappointing pollsters – in 2005, for example, voting against the EU Constitution. As the editors of The Economist once lamented, after they’d guessed another election wrong, “The Dutch have developed an uncanny ability to surprise everyone with their political choices”.

Many analysts assume that even if people say they support Wilders now, they’ll ultimately balk at voting for him. I hope they’re right. But the experience of California in 1982, together with Brexit, Trump and the 2005 referendum, suggests the opposite may be true. There could be a hidden pool of people who secretly plan to vote for his party, but are embarrassed to admit it to pollsters. And with Wilders promising to push for a ‘Nexit’ to follow ‘Brexit’, the consequences of an electoral upset could be profound.

Over the past few weeks, thousands of people in the Netherlands have been doing something which would be unthinkable in most other countries. They’ve been dressing in blackface.

As anyone who lives in the Netherlands will know, this isn’t a one-off event, but something which happens every year. According to Dutch myth, Sinterklaas (Santa Claus) spends much of each November and December travelling around the Netherlands, accompanied by his dark-skinned helpers, Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). In towns and cities nationwide, adults and children turn out to welcome them, dressed for the occasion in Zwarte Piet costumes of their own: brown or black face paint, curly ‘Afro’ wigs, thick lipstick and chunky gold earrings. ‘Comedy’ African accents are not unheard of. To many outsiders, it all makes for a shocking spectacle; jarringly at odds with the Netherlands’ reputation as one of the world’s most tolerant and progressive countries. To most Dutch people, however, the tradition remains entirely unremarkable – as integral a part of the festive season as turkey and stuffing are elsewhere.

Recent years have seen some signs of change. Many Dutch schools, for example, now encourage children to paint their faces in bright rainbow colours rather than the usual black or brown. In Amsterdam, authorities decreed that this year’s costumes must include only token dark smudges on their faces, reflecting the modern story that Zwarte Piet is only black because he climbs down dirty chimneys to deliver presents. Yet despite these changes, blackface remains a common sight in most Dutch towns. One recent survey by the broadcaster NOS found that of 223 committees organising festivities across the country this year, only two locations, Amsterdam and Heemstede, planned to stop using blackface characters altogether. According to another study, conducted in secret by the social affairs ministry and leaked to the press, only 21% of Dutch people support ending or changing the tradition. Rumours of Zwarte Piet’s demise seem greatly exaggerated.

Any non-Dutch person living in the Netherlands soon learns to tread very carefully when discussing Zwarte Piet – a foreigner coming out against the tradition risks being treated in much the same way as a Hillary Clinton supporter at a Trump rally. But it’s hopefully still acceptable to ask: why is blackface still so popular in Netherlands, years after it died out elsewhere?

In part, it’s simply a case of good old-fashioned nostalgia. For many Dutch people, dressing up in brown face paint and a curly wig is a cherished childhood tradition; an innocent game which only the worst kind of Scrooge would want to stop. Like Bonfire Night for the British, Zwarte Piet for the Dutch is something which may seem odd to outsiders, but makes their children happy.

Secondly, one can also detect an element of line-in-the-sand-ism. In an age when many other aspects of culture – film, music, fashion, literature – have been internationalised, there’s a perhaps understandable desire among some Dutch people to say: Enough! Zwarte Piet is an authentic part of our culture heritage, and will not be sacrificed on the altar of globalisation and political correctness.

Thirdly, the debate about blackface also reflects the different boundaries which exist in the Netherlands between the public and private spheres. The Dutch are famous for taking a tolerant approach to many aspects of life; from drug use to euthanasia, prostitution to same-sex marriage. This live-and-let-live attitude is part of what makes the country so appealing, but it can also throw up strange contradictions when one person’s exercise of freedom inconveniences another. In a country where individual rights are sovereign, it’s fine to shout in a residential street at midnight, fine to talk noisily in a ‘silent’ train carriage, and – yes – fine to dress up in a costume which others find offensive. For the Dutch, being tolerant includes respecting the right to do things which others think are intolerant.

More broadly, the controversy also reflects wider attitudes towards race relations which can be – to put it delicately – rather old-fashioned. As I wrote in my book about the Netherlands, the role which the Dutch once played in the global slave trade is still barely discussed in schools and museums, and visitors are often surprised to overhear racial epithets and generalisations which would be unacceptable elsewhere. Last year, the leading Dutch newspaper NRC published a review of a book on race relations, written by an Afro-American journalist, under the headline: “N****r are you crazy?” In some countries, a similar headline would spark public protests, political uproar and perhaps even a criminal investigation. In the straight-talking Netherlands, however, it went largely unremarked.

Finally, the debate about Zwarte Piet also reflects the widening fault lines in Dutch politics. The Netherlands is set to vote for a new government in March. With the far-right politician Geert Wilders enjoying strong support for his Trump-like ‘Make the Netherlands Great Again’ campaign, mainstream politicians have little incentive to face down the traditionalists. Mark Rutte, the centre-right Prime Minister who hopes to avoid a defeat by Wilders, has gone on the record as saying that at this time of year his friends of Caribbean descent “are very happy… because they don’t have to paint their faces”. “When I play Zwarte Piet”, the Prime Minister said, “I am for days trying to get the stuff off my face.” Just this week, when the Justice Minister dared to venture that the celebrations might indeed “upset people and encourage racism’, Rutte quickly responded with a statement saying “I myself love Zwarte Piet; I think it’s a fine tradition.”

The Prime Minister is smart enough to understand the political game he’s playing, and has continuously hedged his Pro-Piet statements with calls for “everyone to decide themselves”. However, many others are even less willing to confront the issue. The Dutch are happy to discuss and debate almost anything – Trump, Brexit, delicate personal problems – but anyone who dares question the wisdom of dressing in blackface is likely to be drowned out by chorus of bitter disagreement. In Rotterdam last month, nearly two hundred anti-blackface protestors were detained by police in an operation which Amnesty International condemned as unlawful. Elsewhere, police were fiercely criticised after an official Twitter account shared photographs of officers themselves posing in blackface. Last week, a Dutch-American journalist was reportedly beaten up by right-wing protestors at a Zwarte Piet demonstration. And when the Dutch national children’s ombudsman said recently that Zwarte Piet might be considered discriminatory, she received numerous death threats. Sadly, in a country which prides itself on political liberty and freedom of expression, reasoned discussion about Zwarte Piet is almost impossible – a situation which does the country little credit. In common with the rest of Europe, the Netherlands is changing fast. But when it comes to blackface, change may be a long time coming.

I was in the German countryside when the results came in; staying on a glorious stretch of the river Rhine filled with craggy peaks, ruined castles and terraced vineyards aglow with the colours of autumn. A kindly German-Indian hotelier brought me a hearty breakfast of ham and rye bread and broke the bad news. “It’s 27 years ago today that the Berlin Wall fell down”, he said, “and now everyone is going to start building walls again”.

Travelling around Germany for the last couple of weeks, it’s been no surprise to find that most Germans are instinctively sceptical of Donald Trump. Germany may have a conservative government, but it’s also a country where the Green Party hold a tenth of all the seats in parliament, and policies like universal healthcare are widely accepted. According to one poll conducted in the summer, just six per cent of Germans felt positively about the prospect of a Trump presidency. Had German citizens been eligible to vote in swing states by post, Hillary Clinton would have won in a landslide.

Another factor, of course, is the elephant in the room: Germany’s own experience of demagoguery. On Monday, one popular post on social media, purporting to be a message from “the people of Germany”, told American voters to “go ahead [and] vote for the guy with the loud voice who hates minorities…. What could possibly go wrong?” The post was accompanied by the hashtag #BeenThereDoneThat. Offline, most Germans are a bit warier of evoking comparisons between Trump Republicanism and the Third Reich. Hitler analogies aren’t taken lightly here, and one prominent academic warned journalists that there was “a crying-wolf danger of an inflationary use of Hitler comparisons”. However, Germans know all too well how easily populist rhetoric can turn poisonous.

Before the election, the German media were almost united in their opposition to Trump. One didn’t have to speak much German to understand front-page headlines like Bild’s “Ist Donald Trump ein Sex Monster?” or the Hamburg Morning Post’s “Bitte nicht den Horror-Clown!” Since the result, headlines have been similarly appalled; first prize goes to Die Zeit for its simple English-language summary: “OH MY GOD!” People I’ve spoken to have been just as shocked as many others around the world.  “It’s awful”, a law student in Karlsruhe told me. “Everywhere you look, the right wing is rising. It makes me very afraid for the future, in Germany and elsewhere”.

For the German government, Trump’s election also creates some tricky dilemmas. Like many others, the Germans will be forced to cooperate with Trump on many issues, but are likely to be appalled by his policies. The message of congratulations which Angela Merkel sent Trump yesterday provided a masterclass in political wordplay: she said she looked forward to “close cooperation” with the new administration, but also said that such cooperation must be based on “values of democracy, freedom and respect for the law, and the dignity of man, independent of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views”. The contrast with Theresa May’s vapid statement that she “looked forward to working with President-elect Donald Trump” on “trade, security and defence” was stark.

An optimist might argue that a Trump Presidency could end up being good for the Germans. With both the British and the Americans threatening to take a step backwards off the world stage, Germany is an obvious candidate to become a new leader of the free world. However, it’s hard to see a weakened, divided America as being helpful in the long term. German exports amount to more than forty per cent of GDP – far more than almost every other country – making Germany deeply vulnerable to any turbulence in world markets. Another big problem is security. For decades, the Germans have been given something of a free ride by NATO; able to under-invest in their own military thanks to the presence of thousands of American troops on German soil, and other powers’ promises to protect German territory against external aggression. If NATO now begins to fracture, the Germans will face difficult questions about whether they should engage more in places like Syria, and the extent to which they’re willing to stand up for neighbours like Poland in the face of a resurgent Russia. Coming a few months after the Brexit vote, Trump’s victory is deeply destabilising. For the Germans to lose one major ally to isolationism is bad news; to lose a second is a disaster.

Finally, Trump’s election also comes at a time when the German political outlook is very uncertain. In more than a decade as Chancellor, Angela Merkel done much to reinforce Germany’s status as a great power, and to build the moral authority of a country where the past casts a long shadow. “She’s really the only one who can run the country properly”, a middle-aged woman shopping for Christmas decorations in Mainz told me. “I can’t imagine anyone else could do it better”. However, the Chancellor’s popularity has been badly undermined by her decision to admit hundreds of thousands of refugees – a policy which Trump said proved Merkel was “ruining Germany” and meant she should be “ashamed of herself”. Elections are due to be held in Germany next year, and Merkel’s party is now polling nearly ten points behind the Social Democrats, with whom they currently share power. The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), founded just a few years ago, has attracted many supporters with its anti-immigrant rhetoric, and already holds seats in more than half of the country’s state assemblies. As German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble warned this morning, “demagogic populism is not a problem only in America. Elsewhere in the West, too, the political debate is an alarming state”. Merkel – along with the likes of Hollande, Renzi and Rutte – will be hoping that Trump’s triumph isn’t easy to repeat on this side of the Atlantic. As American history becomes increasingly like the plot of a Philip Roth novel, the implications for Europe remain unclear.  “Was nun?” the Allgemeine Zeitung asked on its front page this morning; what now? So far, no-one knows.

Nearly four months after British voters shook the great kaleidoscope of European politics and voted to leave the EU, the pieces are still in flux. Right-wingers across the continent are still enjoying their moment of glory, Nigel Farage shows disappointingly few signs of retiring, and Brussels still can’t quite decide whether to play nicely or punish the British for their insubordination. Private Eye magazine probably came closest to hitting the mark this week when it pointed out that the main reason Brexit hasn’t affected the economy much yet is because Britain still remains a full member of the EU.

I’ve spent much of the last few months in East Africa – part of that huge swathe of the world which was, until the 1960s, run from London. Half a century after the sun finally set on the British empire, this region still has strong ties to Britain, and remains dependent on the British for much of its trade and aid. Many leading Leavers hope that even if trade between Britain and Europe declines in the future, trade with Commonwealth countries like Kenya and Uganda could help replace it. What, then, does Brexit look like from here?
Generally, most politicians, economists and journalists have assumed that the effect of Brexit on Africa will be very negative. Brexit, the thinking goes, will trigger an economic downturn in Britain, which will in turn lead to reduced trade between Britain and Africa. Tourism will decline, and the British will spend less on development aid. Barclays recently forecast that post-Brexit, growth in sub-Saharan Africa is likely to halve to just 1.4% this year. Without the British, the EU also looks less likely to reform the agricultural subsidies and tariffs which have long blocked African farmers from competing in world markets. For African economists at least, Brexit is bad news.

In the African press, reactions have been a bit more mixed: Kenya’s Nation newspaper claimed that ‘After Brexit, Africa Should Brace Itself for an Anarchic World’, but Uganda’s Monitor declared that ‘UK Exit From EU Would Benefit Uganda’. But what do people in Africa – both the Brits living here, and the locals – think? There is, of course, something ridiculous about trying to condense the views of an entire continent into a few snappy bullet points, but a few conversations this week displayed an interesting range of opinions. In keeping with old European habits in Africa, it’s perhaps helpful to think of the people I spoke to as belonging to one of several distinct groups.

The first group consists of what one might call the liberal internationalist expats: the well-meaning, well-educated professionals who run many of the region’s embassies, non-profit organisations and charities. Among this group, reaction to the referendum result has been predictably negative – they mostly lean to the left politically, and have built careers in an industry which thrives on the principles of international cooperation, pooled sovereignty and careful diplomacy. “It’s the biggest geopolitical disaster for more than a century”, one forty-something British expat told me over bottles of Nile beer in a starlit Kampala pub garden. “Worse than Iraq, worse than Suez, an absolute disaster.” Some of the concerns of this group seem valid – Theresa May, for example, looks set to make development aid less of a priority than David Cameron. But throughout the region, I also heard a lot of Brexit-means-world-war alarmism which seemed driven more by gut reactions against isolationism than by rational analysis. “I still just can’t believe it”, one British diplomat told me, sounding as if she might burst into tears at any minute. “It’s really the end of Britain as any kind of global power. My kids are going to grow up in a world of conflict and hatred, and that breaks my heart”.

However, a second group of Brits in Africa takes a rather different view. People who one might think of as old colonials – white Brits who’ve lived in Africa for years – seem to be disproportionately in favour of Brexit. Well-educated and rather upper-class, they still have deep ties to the UK despite living abroad for decades, and have perhaps a stronger sense of history and identity than those who’ve never had to think about which country they should call ‘home’. Several of those I spoke to were curmudgeonly about many things, but surprisingly optimistic about the future of Britain outside Europe. Some even seemed to see Brexit as a way for Britain to reclaim the global role which it enjoyed in the heyday of empire in Africa. Out on the Swahili coast of Kenya, I met one old Englishman who’d spent more than twenty years working as a doctor in the tropics. For him, Brexit represented not a retreat into isolationism but a great stride back onto the world stage. “Now we can finally stop being obsessed with this tiny little corner of northern Europe”, he said. “We might trade a bit less with France and Germany, but we can trade more in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America. We haven’t left anything! We’ve joined the world!” A few days later, another ageing British expat in the mountains of eastern Uganda expressed similar sentiments. “The EU is nothing but a great big scam, designed to help the bankers and lobbyists. But now we’re free at last, ready to rejoin the wider world!” Ending his diatribe against the EU’s colonialist and elitist tendencies, he brusquely ordered one of his black servants to bring him another pot of tea.

Then, of course, there are the Africans themselves. In major cities and government ministries, it’s relatively easy to find people who are concerned about the effect of Brexit on trade, or the potential loss of the EU as a counterweight to China. Others, though, see echoes of Africa’s own struggles for independence. “Congratulations on winning your own independence!” one Kenyan man said to me while we looked at the Jomo Kenyatta exhibits in Nairobi’s national museum. Mostly, though, people don’t seem to give a damn. In the major East African newspapers, big Brexit news stories – the referendum vote itself, or Theresa May announcing likely the date for actually triggering Brexit – might get a brief mention on the international pages, but everything else is ignored. Theresa May is not a household name in Kigali, and the bars of Kibera do not host impassioned debates about the future of the customs union. This is probably unsurprising, but it also serves as a useful reminder that what seems like epic news in London or Amsterdam is, to much of the rest of world, no more interesting than the failed peace deal in Colombia, the massacre of protesters in Ethiopia, or the latest corruption scandal in South Africa. A Brexit butterfly flapping its wings in Europe might cause a storm in Africa, but it’s much more likely to go unnoticed. “I don’t think it matters a great deal”, one young man in a crowded minibus told me. “Europe or no Europe, Britain will always be Britain”. One can only hope he was right.

Mwandama is no ordinary Malawian village. I’d visited dozens, perhaps hundreds, of small villages scattered across the country, and while the locations and the languages spoken varied, the sights were almost always the same: bad roads, bare maize fields, leaky little huts and dozens of hungry children. The people were invariably kind and welcoming, and the surrounding countryside was often beautiful, but I always found it a depressing, millenarian scene.

In Mwandama, though, things were rather different. When I visited a few months ago, the main road leading to the village was a dirt track, but a reasonably smooth one, with few wheel-swallowing potholes. At the edge of the village stood a shiny tap with a concrete basin underneath, and a bleach dispenser for purifying water. Every house had glass windows and smooth cement walls which were robust enough to stand years of heavy rains without collapsing. At the village centre, a cluster of neat brick buildings encircled a small open space; each with a rainproof corrugated roof and neatly whitewashed walls. One, I learned, was the school; another a community Grain Bank to help farmers store their crops safely and sell them when maize prices peaked. Across the way was an immaculate health clinic, with smooth brick-and-concrete benches and posters encouraging visitors to wash their hands, vaccinate their children and take free HIV tests. The children hanging around outside the health clinic looked poor, but well-nourished and (by rural Malawian standards) well-off. A few of them even had shoes.

A brief examination of the health clinic soon revealed what made Mandwama different from other villages: it was, as the stickers above the door said: A MILLENNIUM VILLAGE – one of fourteen established throughout Africa to act as showpieces for the Millennium Villages Project (MVP), a programme which aims to improve access to services like education and healthcare, and in the process demonstrate how poor rural communities can be thrust into the modern age. The UN Secretary General, visiting Mwandama in 2005, described it as no less than “a model” for how to “do” development in Africa.

The Millennium Villages scheme is the brainchild of Jeffrey Sachs, a celebrity economist and professional world-saver who’s probably the most influential champion of the idea that countries like Malawi are stuck in a “poverty trap” from which they can only escape via a “big push” of cash and expertise provided by rich foreign donors. The MVP is the embodiment of these beliefs: a trial which aims to prove “aid works” and provide a roadmap for the development of the rest of Africa. However, more than fifteen years after the scheme was launched, the evidence in favour of it is decidedly mixed. Supporters (including Sachs himself) point to evidence showing that in most Millennium Villages, incomes have risen, malaria prevalence plummeted, and access to clean drinking water increased sharply. In the village I visited, the MVP claims that crop yields have increased more than fivefold, that access to improved drinking water has doubled, and that every child has been immunised against measles. Visiting in 2010, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon claimed that “the vast majority” of families in Mwandama had enough food, and every household had an anti-malarial bednet, and many more girls were attending school.  “People’s lives are far better”, he said.

Others, though, claim that the MVP is a classic example of a lavish scheme which makes donors feel good, and creates nice photo opportunities for people like Ban Ki-Moon, but does little to bring about lasting change. Perhaps the most high-profile critic is William Easterly; a mild-mannered, grey-bearded Professor of Economics at New York University who argues that Sachs and his ilk are “resoundingly right about the tragedy of world poverty”, but have a dangerous habit of proposing absurd solutions; “large-scale crash programs” which are modern-day versions of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, dreamt up by unaccountable outsiders and rooted in a neo-colonial “arrogance that ‘we’ know exactly how to fix ‘them’”. Others, argue that the Millennium Villages’ gleaming health clinics and new school buildings are nice to have, but that similar results could be achieved for much less money – the MVP typically invests about $120 per villager per year, an extraordinary amount in places where the government’s entire health budget might amount to $25 per person per year. The debate continues, but as the Economist once noted, “for something designed to improve lives in some of the poorest parts of the world, the Millennium Villages Project certainly stirs up a lot of bad blood”.

Wandering around Mwandama, I was surprised to find myself agreeing with the critics. It was clear that some of the infrastructure which had been built represented a great achievement, but – months after the original 2015 deadline for “solving” poverty in the Millennium Villages had passed – a lot of it still seemed half-finished. One woman I spoke to was proud to show me the neat little house which the MVP had built her, but quick to point out that it didn’t include a bathroom. “I have to go to the toilet at the clinic”, she said “and so do all my neighbours. It gets very dirty sometimes. Even the health workers have to go and wash their hands in this toilet building, when it is dirty, and then go back to treat the patients with their dirty hands. That is not good”. Weirdly, at mid-morning on a weekday, the whole village was practically deserted. The men may have been working in the fields, but there were no children in the school, and neither staff nor patients at the shiny health clinic. The Grain Bank looked empty. At the school, the first classroom I looked in was far nicer than most others I’d seen in Malawi, but the next was completely bare. Another contained only two things: an upturned green plastic bucket and what looked like a dead chicken. The fourth classroom was filled with a mighty jumble of broken, unused desks, which looked as if they had been dumped there by a passing hurricane.
As I peered inside, a boy of about eight ran up behind me, curious and slightly scared of the visiting white man. “Do you go to school here? Do you like it?” I asked. “No school!” he grinned, turning and running away across the red dust of the playing field.

I walked the short distance back to the health clinic, and began nosily peeking through windows and trying doors there. To my  embarrassment, one of the doors which I tried opened, and woman of about my age strode out, introducing herself as a nurse. I asked a few questions about the illnesses she treated, and she recounted a familiar litany of ailments: malaria, pregnancy problems, diarrhea, child malnutrition. But, she said, health problems were less severe than in other places where she’d worked; here in Mwandama, most people at least had enough to eat, and access to clean water. “People here are quite lucky”, she said. I asked whether things had changed much in the last few months, since the Malawian government took over from the foreign advisers who had been running the services in the village. The nurse’s answer was disappointingly predictable: “The clinic is very nice, but the big problem is that we have no drugs. The Millennium people used to send us deliveries, and we had most of what we needed for the patients. But the government took over a few months ago, and since then the deliveries never come. We have no antibiotics and no painkillers. There are no malaria drugs left. If people get sick, we have to try and send them to the nurse in Zomba – but there is no ambulance”. The nurse paused to answer a phone call, and I took the opportunity to flick though my notebook. In it was a quote which I’d copied from one of Jeffrey Sachs’s books, written a few years previously, when the Millennium Villages were just getting started. “In the past”, Sachs had written, “donors often helped countries to build clinics, but then rejected the plea to help cover the salaries of nurses and nurses to help staff the clinics. The predictable result has been the construction of empty shells rather than operating health facilities”.

With impeccable timing, the nurse was interrupted by the arrival of a patient: a slight woman of about twenty-five, with close-cropped hair and tatty purple dress; held up between two friends with her eyes rolled back in her head. One of the two women explained the situation to the nurse, and she quickly translated for my benefit: the sick woman had given birth a few days previously, and had been growing weaker and weaker ever since. She would probably die if she didn’t get a blood transfusion and medication soon, neither of which were available in the “world-class” Millennium Villages clinic. “We can call her an ambulance to go to Zomba, but it will take maybe half a day to get here, depending on whether the driver can find enough fuel. Here, we can do nothing for her.”

I went and fetched my car, and drove back to the clinic, where the patient was loaded carefully into the back seat. With her moaning behind me, I drove off as quickly as I dared, bouncing along the dirt road to Zomba, leaving the empty Potemkin village behind. As Professor Stanley Hoffman wrote during the Vietnam War, the road to hell is often paved with good intentions.