In my LDV contribution in early June I reported that the Dutch CPB (=equivalent of the IFS) warned that every Dutch citizen stood to lose 1.000 euros (by 2030) as a direct consequence of a Brexit.
Now that Brexit has been decided, but article 50 will only be invoked in 2017, a long period of international uncertainty has started. In its “Autumn Estimate”, the same CPB has today (August 9) concluded that Brexit and its uncertainty will hit the Dutch economy and society hard, starting in 2016-7. And we have general elections in March of 2017.

First, employers will be uncertain to hire new staff; unemployment (which had finally started to fall) will stagnate at 6,2% of the working population, 560.000 people.

Second: economic growth in 2017, which the CPB in June estimated at 2,1%, will only be 1,6%.

Third: the rise in median household purchasing power will fall: from 2,7% now to 0,7% in 2017.

Fourth: even more inequality in the rise and fall of incomes: the top incomes (over 4500 euros a month) will get 1,2% more, but pensioners and those on benefits lose 0,6% and 0,1% respectively. That will surely be corrected by the coalition government in the yearly Budget Statement this September, but the correction itself costs money that could have been spent elsewhere. For example in mending gaping holes and systemic faults in our pension system.

Fifth: investment will fall back from 6,0 to 5,0%; and the rise in private consumption will fall back from 1,5 to 1,3%. Dutch consumer confidence and that of purchasing managers have already taken a hit when the Brexit result was announced; and these figures show more gloom is ahead. Eurosceptic populist Geert Wilders (PVV party leader) may have easy answers to all of this, but as usual they don’t convince experts. Remember the 350 million to the NHS and how long it lasted after the Brexit vote?

D66, the Dutch Libdems, used the CPB Autumn Estimate to attack Wilders, who had issued a “jumping for joy” press statement about the success Farage had had with his Brexit referendum; Wilders repeated his advice: a “Nexit”, Dutch exit. He omitted that even Farage would not touch Wilders with a barge pole because of the racist, rampant Islamophobia of Wilders and his PVV party.

In a press statement today, the D66 parliamentary party said that the results from Brexit on the Dutch economy showed how harmful any EU exit was, and that the Brexit impact would pale in comparison with the destruction and misery a “Nexit” would wreak on us. That had the desired effect: Wilders immediately put out a tweet (he never reacts to responding tweets) repeating his Nexit proposal and brandishing us the “Europhiles66”. We accept that name with pride.
The D66 gambit has worked: the 2017 Budget debates in parliament this September will not only center around the effects of Brexit, but also be the occasion for every sensible party (80% of parliament) to attack Mr. Wilders about his “Nexit” obsession, with D66 as natural leader of that attack. We could not be happier: “once more unto that breach”, storming the stunning stupidity of Populists whose leaders fall by the wayside once their country exits, or who while smiling in the face of voters, are plotting and backstabbing amongst each other.

* Dr. Bernard Aris is a historian, a D66 parliamentary researcher and a LibDem supporting member.