“The previous coalition partner, the PvdA [Labour] tried to buck the trend through a nuanced campaign: they explained the political process, especially the compromises involved in being the junior partner.” Van Leeuwen, a member of the party herself, appreciated the campaign’s realism – but the PvdA suffered an electoral wipeout. “The voters might have preferred to hear grand promises – but that’s a problematic trend too.”

This consensus-driven system, in which the negotiations leading up to the coalition agreement are more exciting than the elections themselves, is “one of the frustrating but intriguing things about Dutch politics.” But there is a tension with Van Leeuwen’s previous point. “There’s always the question: What coalitions are possible? Can you govern without the populist parties?”

Rutte’s first coalition cabinet was propped up by the controversial PVV, founded and led by Geert Wilders, probably the country’s most well-known politician internationally. Commanding a sizeable chunk of the vote, the PVV is perpetually both potential kingmaker and poisoned chalice. “If you want to govern without them, you might need to form a coalition with four parties – which means an incredible amount of negotiations.”

Populist snacks, pragmatic staples

The FvD is another far-right populist party that politicians fall over themselves to denounce. “They are new and talked about a lot. Have they been racist? How racist exactly? There’s a race among politicians to say how disgusted they are… Of course, that’s important, but you could argue that the attention is disproportionate, that it happens at the expense of debates that are more relevant to voters.”

Like the PVV, the FvD is more or less synonymous with their charismatic leader. The idea of new parties organised around one personality is relatively new: “At the beginning of the millennium, Pim Fortuyn formed his own party – he was murdered before the election but the party still got enough seats to get into the governing coalition.” Without their charismatic leader, the party quickly crumbled – but it has set an important precedent.

“You can see the advantage populists have over traditional structured parties. Wilders has a lot of power and can do what he likes – he can react very quickly to current affairs and make outrageous proposals, whereas in the PvdA, for example, everything is discussed forever with all the members. This internal filter also moderates radical positions that would get more news coverage.”

Van Leeuwen relies on historic precedent to assuage her own concerns about the rising tide of populism: after all, the reaction to the charismatic arch-provocateur Fortuyn was the eight-year reign of Jan Peter Balkenende – the unenthusiastic answer to the question: what if Harry Potter had grown up to pursue a middle-management career in accounting. For all the thirst for colourful characters, the Dutch electorate continues to appreciate pragmatism above charisma.