Dear John,
The Netherlands voted this week, and the far right lost ground.
For months, polls predicted a surge for Geert Wilders, a hard-right, racist populist who has built his career attacking immigrants and minorities. Not all too dissimilar from Nigel Farage, only with more eccentric hair.
His PVV party looked set to dominate the election. Instead, voters turned away. The liberal, pro-European D66 made major gains, finishing level with PVV and opening the door to a centrist coalition that can keep the far right out of government.
It’s proof that when people have real choice and every vote counts, extremism loses its grip. Hope wins.
Proportional Representation isn’t a silver bullet. The Netherlands still has challenges and it hasn’t prevented the existence of such a far-right party. But PR does one crucial thing, it stops extremists taking total control on a minority of the vote. It forces parties to work together and keeps politics closer to the people it’s meant to serve.
That’s exactly what’s missing here in the UK.
Our broken first-past-the-post system means Nigel Farage and Reform UK could grab huge influence on barely a third of the vote, shutting majority views out completely. It rewards division and punishes cooperation.
That’s why we campaign for a better democracy – one that gives everyone a voice, values truth over outrage, and rebuilds trust from the ground up. Because without a fair system, everything else, from climate action to rebuilding public services, becomes infinitely harder.
The Dutch result shows it can be different. Given a fair system, people choose progress over fear. They choose unity over scapegoating. They choose to move forward together.
We deserve that too. A democracy where every vote matters. Where extremists can’t hijack power through a broken system.
But we won’t get there overnight. It’s a long fight against a system designed to protect itself. The far-right has wealthy backers and deep pockets. What we have is people, supporters like you who refuse to give up on a fairer future.
A monthly donation isn’t just a contribution, it’s what keeps the work moving now, not in two or three years when the next election rolls around and we’re too late.
Right now, we’re doing the unglamorous but essential work. Uniting MPs through the APPG on Fair Elections, building cross-party support, and laying the groundwork to fix our democracy for good. That’s how change really happens.
Monthly support means we can keep pushing when the cameras aren’t watching – organising, researching, and building the alliances that make fair votes possible.
Please set up a monthly donation today if you can, and help us fix our democracy, and keep hope winning:
