Your leader on the Dutch general election (“Wilders’ victory is a warning for Europe”, FT View, November 25) argues that “excluding [Geert Wilders’] winning Freedom party from power altogether would risk looking undemocratic”.
The Freedom party took 23.6 per cent of the vote, alarming certainly but well below a level at which any party should be able to claim an automatic right to participate in government. In the 2010 UK general election, Gordon Brown’s Labour party obtained 29 per cent of the vote, but was — understandably — excluded from the subsequent coalition, where David Cameron’s Conservatives, with 36.1 per cent of the vote, linked up with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats (23 per cent).
The only legitimate coalition in the Netherlands now will be one made up of parties which together represent over 50 per cent of voters.
There’s nothing undemocratic about that.
Jef Smith
Zitta Smith-van der Hak
London N10, UK
This post was originally published on Financial Times
