Column | Very happy with Faber

If someone earns a ribbon, « Geert Wilders said in the Lower House on Wednesday, » then it is Minister Faber. An excellent minister, we are very happy with her.  »

How would it feel like – against the tide – to be praised? As a much mocked child who is protected by his father in the schoolyard? Nice or especially painful? There seemed to be a touch of satisfaction over the face of Faber, but she quickly fell back in a kind of demonstrative resignation, as if she wanted to say: « You just do. »

You can interpret such statements by Wilders in two ways. Here a politician speaks who has completely lost contact with reality. Or, here is a politician who tries to veil reality, precisely because he knows what is going on very well: he has forced the government a fully incompetent asylum and migration minister.

As an experienced Wilders watcher I choose the second option. Wilders realizes that Faber was a misunderstanding, he would have preferred to have party mate Gidi Markuszower at that position at the time, but he fell out due to an unfavorable safety check. Admitting that Faber has been a wrong choice means recognition of our own inability – something we never have to expect from Wilders. In that he is also a real Trumpian: rather in full racing than admitting his own mistakes.

Wilders is not at all happy with Faber, he would love to get rid of her but realizes that this means great political damage to himself. In the meantime, he pretends that poor Faber is the victim of opposition by his political enemies. It brought him in a fierce confrontation with Frans Timmermans, who served him of unmistakable reply: « Faber is the biggest prutser who has ever been in box K. »

It was the most repeated fragment in the debate on TV. Timmermans here and there was blamed for him to resort to such an almost Wilderian insult. I suspect that Timmermans will not make it a habit, he only admitted to the tangible temptation to answer a big mouth with a big mouth. And it also worked, because Wilders was quite tame for the rest of the day before his do, as if he were craving the end of this uncomfortable debate – the first debate in which Timmermans was clearly in charge of him.

Wilders is going through a difficult period. He falls in the polls that are always so important to him, he feels opposed to ‘his’ cabinet and he is retroactively becoming more vulnerable through the support he has granted in recent years to autocrats such as Putin and – to this day – Orbán and Trump.

This development causes some optimism in progressive circles about a rapid fall of the Cabinet Schoof. I don’t share that optimism. The PVV, BBB and NSC government parties are falling considerably in the polls and therefore have no interest in rapid elections. Moreover, Wilders will realize that he will never come to power in the Netherlands again, unless he wins more than 75 seats and can form a government with all completely excellent PPV ministers with which he can be very happy.

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