As Dutch voters head to the polls on Wednesday for the second time in two years, the man who set the country’s political agenda for two decades looks strangely isolated.

Geert Wilders , the peroxide-haired showman of the Dutch far right, pulled his Freedom Party (PVV) out of the four-party government coalition in June after partners refused to endorse his demand for Europe’s “strictest asylum policy ever”, including army patrols on borders and turning away all refugees. His exit plunged the Netherlands back into an election that could now leave him locked out of power.

It is a humbling comedown for a politician whose victory in 2023 briefly put him at the apex of Dutch politics . Yet where Wilders saw an opportunity to prove hard-right populists could govern, the reality was chaos

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