The big winner of Wednesday’s Dutch election – and now the largest party of the left for the first time – was GreenLeft, headed by 30-year-old Jesse Klaver, hailed by his enthusiastic supporters as the “Jessiah”.

According to a generally reliable Ipsos exit poll, the party, formed 25 years ago by a merger of communists, pacifists, evangelicals and self-styled radicals, quadrupled its MPs from four to 16 after a storming campaign by Klaver.

“This is a fantastic result for us, a historic victory,” said the GreenLeft chairwoman, Marjolein Meijer. The result showed there was “very fertile ground in the Netherlands for change and a positive and hopeful story,” she said. “For us this is just the start.”

The party celebrated its historic advance with a tweet showing a gif of Kermit the Frog dancing for joy.

Love it 😆

Luckily the VVD is still by far the largest party and we don't need Klaver. Hopefully we'll get the following sensible right wing coalition: VVD-CDA-D66-ChristenUnie.

What's shocking but not unexpected is that Denk, basically a subsidiary of Erdogan's AK party, won 3 seats. Decades of socialist "integration" policies finally bear fruit.

Personally what I found shocking but not unexpected was the openly racist bigot won 20 seats.

He had 30+ in the polls not long ago and won 24 seats in 2010, so you're a little late with the shocks.

9 days later

That's a very poor article. Le Pen might be a cunt but she's right in that the Russian sanctions are fucking up both the Russian and European economy.

Macron is probably not as bad as Fillon would've been or Le Pen herself obviously but he's going to be way worse than even the gutless sack of shit Hollande. Typical for another European Labour party that their own people are going out of their way to stab Hamon in the back for an independent candidate

Yea, but that doesn't mean that it's alright if Le Pen wins. Similar to what happened over here, really.

I didn't say that I want Le Pen to win. Similar to what happened in the US is how the supposed liberals/labour are again fucking over their own candidate in Bernie/Hamon. Melenchon would've been my choice but Hamon is leagues better than that slimy dickhead Macron

Yep I'd agree with that. Especially the "supposed" qualifier.

He's Blair 2.0 basically, a bloke who calls himself a leftist but has virtually no left in him. After Hollande's prostration before Merkel and Valls' subsequent weeding out of the cabinet of anyone opposing the New Labour approach he was the first one to jump and stab Montebourg in the back

Don't want to bore you with political facts - to get an idea of what kind of bloke he is just see the T-shirt éclat during the CGT rallies last year where he told a unionist that he should stop demonstrating and start working, otherwise he'd be stuck wearing his shabby shirt and would never wear a nice suit like he does 😆 He's the ultimate neoliberal and that's why the media all over Europe are bigging him up, which is easier for them now that the alternative is an obnoxious piece of shit in Le Pen.

He doesn't call himself a leftist.
For him the right left spilt is passé

"les clivages sont devenus obsolètes"

"J’ai décidé qu’on allait créer un mouvement politique nouveau. C’est-à-dire un mouvement politique ni à droite, ni à gauche. L’idée de ce mouvement politique c’est une dynamique face aux blocages de la société, c’est essayer d’avancer. Ce mouvement à un nom : En Marche". 

That talk of "right left split is passé" is classic New Labour, it's verbatim the same horseshit the likes of Schröder and his followers say. This is Macron himself in an interview:

http://www.lci.fr/politique/macron-un-homme-de-gauche-qui-veut-travailler-avec-des-gens-de-droite-1254779.html

Le ministre de l'Économie qui revendique déjà 13.000 adhérents à son mouvement "En marche", était l'invité de France2 dimanche soir. "Je suis dans un gouvernement de gauche, je suis de gauche, je viens de la gauche mais j’ai envie de travailler avec des femmes et hommes de droite" a-t-il notamment déclaré.

Your French is probably better than mine but I'm pretty sure I know what "je suis de gauche" means

He's referring to his background, his political origins but indicates clearly his desire to work with those on the right.
You're also ignoring the fact that when he describes creating his "new" party En Marche he specifically says that he's creating a movement that's neither right nor left.

"mouvement politique ni à droite, ni à gauche"

You're suggesting that he's not left at heart but is claiming to be a leftist, that is contradicted by the fact that he's declared that his party is not defined by being either right or left and that the right left split is now outdated.

When I was in Lyon a few months back, a lot of 'em were well up for a bit of Frexit. Can see it happening

y va marquer wrote:

You're suggesting that he's not left at heart but is claiming to be a leftist, that is contradicted by the fact that he's declared that his party is not defined by being either right or left and that the right left split is now outdated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way

Talking about the left-right split being outdated is a bland orthodoxy of neoliberalism. Maybe the French just aren't as used to it due to having had a stronger left wing for longer, but it certainly doesn't fix anything by itself.

I'm aware of the "third way" bw - the French in general are not used to it - I've seen it referred to as "la naissance de la troisième voie"

I wasn't suggesting that it did fix anything I was just pointing out that it was not accurate to say Macron painted himself as a "leftist"

Obvs if one is insistent of seeing everything through the confining prism of left right it's a reflex to dismiss the notion that it MAY be possible to view social and economic issues without being overwhelmingly influenced by ideology as prescribed by the right or left.

Personally I don't see things in terms of "left" and "right" very much … yeah of course there are large cohorts of people that identify as "left" or "right" in democracies, but that's a quirk of majoritarian representative systems.

You have to persuade half the people you're right to get anything done in those systems, but that doesn't define the underlying economic situation. 

The vast majority of people, us, do waged work of some kind in a system where a lot of the infrastructure and funds are controlled by or on behalf of a fairly small group of people who "invest" in different things and run the show.

It's the fact that there isn't much difference between people of the left and right in the centre that enables the Third Way types to get a few more votes, but the conciliatory posture with big business and finance isn't going to serve developed economies well at this point. 

11 days later