Wilders makes shock gains in Dutch elections

Best known for his strident attacks on Islam, Mr Wilders' electoral triumph sent shock waves through the country's large immigrant communities and sounded the death knell for the image of the Netherlands as a bastion of tolerance.

The shock-factor was all the greater as the peroxide-haired politician had appeared sidelined during the election campaign, as the mainstream parties focused on how to deal with the nation's economic woes and immigration slipped down the political agenda.

Yet Mr Wilders made the strongest gains in Wednesday's election, doubling the number of seats for his Freedom Party to 24. The pro-business VDD party – which Mr Wilders left to set up on his own – won 31 of the 150 seats up for grabs, pipping the Labour Party of former Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen by a single seat in the narrowest ever electoral victory.

"The impossible has come true," a triumphant Mr Wilders said, noting that 1.5 million people had chosen his party's "optimistic" platform. "More security, less crime, less immigration, less Islam – that is what the Netherlands has chosen."

His party picked up the bulk of its seats from another party on the right, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's Christian Democrats. After eight years in power, his party suffered an historic defeat, losing nearly half its seats. Visibly emotional, Mr Balkenende called the results "very, very disappointing" and announced he was quitting politics.

The Netherlands now faces a period of huge political uncertainty, with the coalition jostling as painful budget cuts loom. The likely next prime minister, VVD leader Mark Rutte, will either have to form a messy and potentially incoherent government possibly with his Labour rivals, possibly with scores of smaller parties, or go into business with the notoriously uncompromising Mr Wilders.

During the election, Mr Rutte was the only politician to have signalled that he would be willing to include the firebrand politician in his coalition, although it is unclear whether he will actually reach out a hand towards a man despised by many sections of Dutch society.

As parties started the horse-trading yesterday, Mr Wilders was in a combative mood. "I say to all the newly elected Freedom Party MPs of our beautiful party, bring battering rams with you because, starting tomorrow, we're going to give them hell."

Although he insisted that he wanted to be seated at the cabinet table in The Hague, there are still question marks over how far he would be willing to go in order to enter the political mainstream.

Mr Wilders has built much of his success on making headline-grabbing demands, such as calling for a ban on headscarves in public places and an immediate stop on immigration, and has in the past been unwilling to soften his tone.

In April's municipal polls, to cite one example, Freedom Party politicians walked out of coalition-building talks after refusing to budge on the headscarf ban. One centre-left MP commented that Mr Wilders "never wanted the responsibility of being in power. That would force him to compromise with mainstream parties and he would not be able to sustain his extremist views."

Dutch Muslim groups all expressed horror and shock at yesterday's outcome. Farid Azarkan of the Dutch-Moroccan umbrella group SMN said: "Dutch-Moroccans ask themselves if they still form part of Dutch society and whether their neighbours and colleagues really see them as fellow Dutch citizens. Can they and their children still look forward to a safe future in the Netherlands?"