I’ve actually lived in both The Netherlands and the UK and the situation is not at all comparable.
In the UK, which has a First Past The Post parliamentary seat allocation system, a party with 41% of the votes like these guys has 60% of parliamentary seats, more than enough to change any law they feel like because there is no written Constitution (hence no laws require passing the 75% threshold needed to change the Constitution, so a simple 50% + 1 majority is enough). Also and as a side effect of FPTP there are de facto only 3 parties that might ever be part of government, and one of them - the LibDems - maybe once every half a century in average. Winning the most votes in Britain almost invariably means getting near absolute power because a simple parliamentary majority requires only about 37% of votes cast (and remember, in systems rigged so that votes for smaller parties are usually wasted, votes concentrate on large parties), which without a Constitution means very few limits on which laws they can make or change.
Meanwhile in The Netherlands they have Proportional Vote so their Parliament - the Tweede Kamer - represents quite closely the votes cast and every government is in practice a coalition because nobody gets 50% of the votes (and here you see the very opposite effect you see in FPTP systems - people vote for their favorite option, not for “electable” “lesser evil” options, so voting is naturally very fragmented), plus there is a written Constitution (the Grondwet). Winning the most votes in The Netherlands guarantees nothing in terms of power: it’s pretty much impossible to form government without other parties so if you’re basically “the assholes’ party” you’re not going to get any power at all. Even if you do manage to somehow find enough parties to form a government cohalition (usually it requires 3+ parties), you will still not have enough seats to push through the kind of deep changes to people’s rights that require a change to the Grondwet.
Unsurprisingly, the Far Right in Britain already took over power, during the Leave Referendum when UKIP supporters became members of the Tory Party (one of the two parties of the de facto power duopoly there) to internally vote in that party’s leadership context so that it was the politicians who those far right people saw as representing them - far right populists who claimed to want to “Free Britain From the EUSSR dictatorship” - who took power in the Tory part, hence took over Government and one of the only 2 trully electable parties over there. Only a few tens of thousands of people were required to, through their vote in the internal Tory Party leadership elections, shift the UK government from Conservative to Far Right Populist.
Meanwhile in The Netherlands the Far Right have 37 seats (of 150) in the Tweede Kamer and can’t find supporting parties with the needed 39 seats to form a coalition government - they’re about as likely to get power as a chicken to grow teeth and, due to the Grondwet even less likely to be able to pass the kind of changes to the Law that impact the most basic of rights at the Tory Government has been doing in Britain.
Very knowledgeable and spot-on comment, at least as far as the Dutch situation is concerned (can’t really judge for the English). This is the kind of stuff I come to Lemmy for, thank you!
I’ve actually lived in both The Netherlands and the UK and the situation is not at all comparable.
In the UK, which has a First Past The Post parliamentary seat allocation system, a party with 41% of the votes like these guys has 60% of parliamentary seats, more than enough to change any law they feel like because there is no written Constitution (hence no laws require passing the 75% threshold needed to change the Constitution, so a simple 50% + 1 majority is enough). Also and as a side effect of FPTP there are de facto only 3 parties that might ever be part of government, and one of them - the LibDems - maybe once every half a century in average. Winning the most votes in Britain almost invariably means getting near absolute power because a simple parliamentary majority requires only about 37% of votes cast (and remember, in systems rigged so that votes for smaller parties are usually wasted, votes concentrate on large parties), which without a Constitution means very few limits on which laws they can make or change.
Meanwhile in The Netherlands they have Proportional Vote so their Parliament - the Tweede Kamer - represents quite closely the votes cast and every government is in practice a coalition because nobody gets 50% of the votes (and here you see the very opposite effect you see in FPTP systems - people vote for their favorite option, not for “electable” “lesser evil” options, so voting is naturally very fragmented), plus there is a written Constitution (the Grondwet). Winning the most votes in The Netherlands guarantees nothing in terms of power: it’s pretty much impossible to form government without other parties so if you’re basically “the assholes’ party” you’re not going to get any power at all. Even if you do manage to somehow find enough parties to form a government cohalition (usually it requires 3+ parties), you will still not have enough seats to push through the kind of deep changes to people’s rights that require a change to the Grondwet.
Unsurprisingly, the Far Right in Britain already took over power, during the Leave Referendum when UKIP supporters became members of the Tory Party (one of the two parties of the de facto power duopoly there) to internally vote in that party’s leadership context so that it was the politicians who those far right people saw as representing them - far right populists who claimed to want to “Free Britain From the EUSSR dictatorship” - who took power in the Tory part, hence took over Government and one of the only 2 trully electable parties over there. Only a few tens of thousands of people were required to, through their vote in the internal Tory Party leadership elections, shift the UK government from Conservative to Far Right Populist.
Meanwhile in The Netherlands the Far Right have 37 seats (of 150) in the Tweede Kamer and can’t find supporting parties with the needed 39 seats to form a coalition government - they’re about as likely to get power as a chicken to grow teeth and, due to the Grondwet even less likely to be able to pass the kind of changes to the Law that impact the most basic of rights at the Tory Government has been doing in Britain.
Very knowledgeable and spot-on comment, at least as far as the Dutch situation is concerned (can’t really judge for the English). This is the kind of stuff I come to Lemmy for, thank you!