International

The SP has, not for the first time, tabled questions to the Christian Democrat-Labour coalition government on the subject of Labour's apparent policy of using public money to further the party's ends, rather than the national interest. Labour Party (PvdA) Secretary of State for Europe Frans Timmermans set off last week, along with a coterie of Labour's great and good, on a pro-EU tour organised by a bureau of prominent PvdA personalities, This would have been unobjectionable had it been financed by the PvdA, rather than by the taxpayer.

SP leader Agnes Kant was asked this weekend whether the SP could imagine participating in a government with Geert Wilders' PVV, the Freedom Party, a wholly new party which some polls say now has more support than any established political force. In most countries the question would be absurd: the SP is the most progressive party in the Dutch parliament, while the PVV is a right-wing 'populist' party with a distinctly racist message. In the Netherlands, however, which is invariably ruled by coalitions which can include a wide spectrum of parties, it was a reasonable thing to ask, and the SP was happy to answer it in a way which cleared up any confusion. “Where possible we will always cooperate with other parties," said Kant, "even in some circumstances with the PVV. But being in government with the PVV isn't an option for us. They are much too committed to a neoliberal approach, and moreover they want to see discriminatory policies. We can't go along with that."