What does that mean? A general movement back towards the centre or a continued movement to niche patties on the fringes like everywhere else in the world?
It depends on your perspective. This is what the party looks like with Caroline (the leader) in the middle.
spoiler (click to show/hide)
In an era where most political leaders and parties try to model themselves after Obama or Hillary Clinton she insists they stay 'normal' and grounded.
Having just won a single seat in the previous election to represent the farmers in parliament, she worked hard to learn the ropes of national politics.
The party platform is a mix of both right and left wing ideas and they don't consider themselves a right wing party. They very much focus on local issues, such as keeping services like healthcare and public transport available in rural areas.
It is what expanded her appeal beyond just the farmers. It's the idea that someone stands up for the common man and the issues the politicians in the Hague don't seem to care about or are unable to fix no matter how small or insignificant.
They call this "de menselijke maat" or "the human scale". The government should trust and work for, not against the people, that sort of thing. The right wing opposition mostly represented by Wilders and FvD lost a lot of votes to her but so did the Socialists and Christian Democrats. The ruling parties really fucked up this campaign. The minister of housing for example met with a bunch of young people who can't find a home and one of them started to list all the things that she tried and he told her: "Have you tried to find a rich boyfriend?" . The finance minister during the debate said: "People need to accept that expropriation is just a part of life" as a comment on her plans to expropriate the farmers.
The left is very much against the BBB because they don't want to expropriate the farmers, tax meat, ban fishing or do other things that the left considers 'essential' to save the climate. However the problem for the left is that they've pretty much supported this government every step of the way. The biggest BBB opponent ran on a platform of: "If these people get more power, our plans won't continue" which is exactly what most of the country wanted to happen. Another big factor is that Mark Rutte is a soulless bureaucrat. Many times he's confronted with scandals like children dying in refugee camps or children being removed from their parents because they've been wrongly accused of tax fraud. And he always says something like: "That's terrible, but the economy has grown by 0.5% so things are going really well!" and when utterly shocked people follow up with: "Do you actually care?" he says: "Yes, some things go wrong but whe shouldn't lose sight of the things that work out well!" . The right also had no answer, with COVID gone the FvD platform is a mixed bag of anti-woke, anti-war and conspiracy talking points. The expropriation of farmers overshadowed migration so Wilders couldn't get any traction either. The FvD tried to label BBB as 'controlled opposition' just another tool of the government to stay in power but even they don't believe that.
The biggest risk is that like parties that exploded in popularity so quickly before (LPF,FvD) the BBB falls apart. But there are currently no signs that it will follow the same trajectory as those other parties.
Despite having a platform and specific demands, she's also not against working with other parties. I don't think there's a movement like this anywhere in the world. When the journalists visited their party office today there wasn't any fancy catering. Just her son baking eggs for everyone. When they ask her if this is the best thing she could hope for she says: "I wish my late husband was still here to celebrate with me".
A genuine, authentic, normal person in politics
