The Dutch situation is being echoed across the continent. In Finland the populist, anti-European "Finns" Party (formerly the True Finns) is as big as any of the mainstream parties, and a six-party coalition, ranging from the socialist left to the greens to the conservatives, has huddled together in a government to keep them out of office. In Italy, the comedian Beppe Grillo is at 20 percent in the polls; in Ireland, Sinn Fein is now the second-biggest party in opinion polls; in Greece, radical Syriza has replaced the once-mighty Pasok as the main party of the left.
Even in countries where the electoral system prevents new parties from getting much representation, they are increasingly making the weather. In France, Marine Le Pen's National Front and Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Left Front got a combined 29 percent of the vote in the presidential elections (though the electoral system stopped them from translating support into seats in the parliamentary elections that followed). And in Britain, though the anti-EU UK Independence party is only at 7 percent in the polls, it threatens to come in second in next year's euro elections.
As power shifts, so does policy. "We are scared shitless," a Finnish cabinet minister told me. "The only way we can deal with the True Finns is to clone them." This is why "pro-European" governments in Finland and the Netherlands are counterintuitively threatening to block the EU bailout fund; the "sensible" Greek New Democracy party is echoing Syriza's call for a renegotiation of the austerity package; and the British Labour and Conservative parties are edging toward calling for a referendum on EU membership that they would both love to avoid. How else to shore up their credentials against the insurgent parties? In a new political order where elites have lost their freedom of action, will it be possible for the EU to take any decisions at all, including ones designed to save the system from collapse?
At the turn of the century, the late political scientist Peter Mair pointed to a void that had opened where traditional politics used to be. While citizens have retreated from the political sphere into their private lives, the parties that used to be embedded in civic life have become mere appendages of the state (a "governing class" that seeks office rather than a chance to represent ideas or groups in society). It is this void that the new parties are trying to fill and - so far at least - succeeding. They are recasting politics as a dispute between elites and the people, and are rediscovering the forgotten roles of opposition and expression (in fact some parties such as Greece's Syriza and the Dutch PVV have gone to great lengths to avoid going into government).
It is becoming clear that the roots of the euro crisis are political rather than economic. The 2008 financial meltdown may well give birth to one of the great moments of political realignment - bigger even than 1917, 1945 or 1989. Europe's governing class will hope that the new forces in Europe will implode once they are forced into power - but as Arnie's Terminator films showed, a destructive force, once unleashed, can be nearly impossible to destroy.
