Dutch farmer protest party: from nowhere to shared largest party in the Senate; meanwhile, France, Italy

In a shocking upset in the Dutch elections for the Senate (known there as Eerste Kamer or First Chamber, the lower house of parliament being the Tweede Kamer or Second Chamber), the BBB (BoerBurgerBeweging, Farmers Citizen Movement), catapulted from out of nowhere to 16 and possibly 17 seats out of 75. This would make it either the largest or shared-largest (with GroenLinks, the Green Left) party in the Senate.

[photo from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/03/16/farmers-citizen-movement-win-election-netherlands-mark-rutte/]

This comes in the wake of massive protests against the plans of the “center-right” government of Mark Rutte to severely hamstring farming for the sake of meeting EU climate targets.

A farmers’ protest party angered by new green laws triumphed in shock Dutch election results, prompting its leader to ask: “People, what the f— happened?” […]

Mr Rutte’s government plans to meet EU climate targets by reducing livestock and through compulsory farm buyouts to reduce nitrogen emitted by manure and fertilisers.

The protests have drawn global attention, and garnered the support of the former US president Donald Trump, as well as conspiracy theorists who claim the farmers are victims of a “globalist” plot to steal their land.

The BBB’s victory means the farmers can form alliances with other parties in the senate and block green legislation, in a country that is the world’s second-largest agricultural exporter after the US.

“It is not just about nitrogen,” Ms van der Plas said on Wednesday night, adding that people in the Netherlands were “fed up”.  

The BBB’s meteoric rise is particularly astonishing because it was only founded in October 2019 and won a single seat in the Dutch parliament in 2021’s general election.

But the latest elections turned into a de facto referendum on Mr Rutte, who is the longest-serving prime minister in the Netherlands’ history and has been in office since 2010.

The Dutch broadcaster NOS published an Ipsos poll that showed 60 per cent of voters wanted to express their views on the government and 46 per cent of them were against its policies.

Developing….

UPDATE: it’s even more of a blowout. The First Chamber is actually delegated by the States-Provincial, and the election was really for that. In the States-Provincial, BBB got more than twice the seats of the 2nd party (Rutte’s own VVD)… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Dutch_provincial_elections

(b) Meanwhile in Italy, “hard-right” PM Giorgia Meloni of the Brothers of Italy movement is confounding critics, combining mainstream positions abroad with a domestic attack on gender ideology. The Telergraph has a detailed overview (paywalled; cached copy)

(c) And in France, Macron is facing popular outrage and a poafter his minority government rammed through without a vote… a raising of the retirement age from 62 to 64. (paywalled; cached copy)

Mr Macron has staked his reformist mettle on passing the reform to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 by 2030.

The seemingly innocuous change, which the Macron camp insists is essential to avoid the pay-as-you-go system collapsing, has sparked massive public and union backlash.  

Two-thirds of the French have backed a string of massive strike protests since early January that have failed to sway government resolve.

The majority-Right Senate adopted the legislation on Thursday morning, but a vote in the lower house National Assembly scheduled for the afternoon was so uncertain that Ms Borne chose to circumvent it.

“We cannot take the risk of seeing 175 hours of parliamentary debate collapse. We cannot take the risk of seeing the compromise built by the two assemblies dismissed,” she told MPs.

The bill’s fate was in the hands of around 60 MPs from the opposition Republicans (LR) party, who were kingmakers. But dozens remained determined to oppose the reforms, despite the fact they practically mirror those that the Republicans have long called for.

Defeat for the government would have been a massive setback for Mr Macron, less than a year after he secured a second term as president. He ran on a manifesto with a central pledge to raise the retirement age in order to keep the country’s generous social welfare model afloat.

Good heavens. Our own retirement age was raised from 62 to 67 some time ago (gradually phased in based on date of birth), while I myself can request ‘extension of service’ until 70. I’m not a huge fan of Macron, but with people routinely living into their nineties and increasingly beyond, some adjustment is inevitable.

[…]

The Macron government has already trigged [Article] 49.3 a dozen times to pass the budget and other laws in recent months but constitutionalists point out that it is highly unusual – not to say irregular – not to put a reform of this magnitude to a vote.

What is this mysterious Article 49.3 of the French Constitution? Wikipedia:

Article 49 Subsection 3 deals with an administration engagement de responsabilité (commitment of responsibility), which allows the executive branch to force passage of a legislative text unless the opposition introduces a vote de censure (motion of no confidence), which has little chance of passing, since it may it also entails the dissolution of the legislature pending new elections.

(d) Bonus item: real Kamala Harris or fake?

ADDENDUM: Happy St. Patrick’s Day to my readers of Irish heritage. Via 1440.net, here is an article on who the real St. Patrick was.