Russell is right. I had not heard about this in our news (and it is good!), so I went searching the internet.

BBC NEWS

A farmers’ party has stunned Dutch politics, and is set to be the biggest party in the upper house of parliament after provincial elections.

The Farmer-citizen movement (BBB) was only set up in 2019 in the wake of widespread farmers’ protests.

But with most votes counted they are due to win 15 of the Senate’s seats with almost 20% of the vote.

“This isn’t normal, but actually it is! It’s all normal citizens who voted,” said leader Caroline van der Plas.

The BBB aims to fight government plans to slash nitrogen emissions harmful to biodiversity by dramatically reducing livestock numbers and buying out thousands of farms.

But its appeal has spread rapidly beyond its rural heartland, on a populist platform that represents traditional, conservative Dutch social and moral values.

Shocked by the scale of their success, Ms van der Plas told supporters that voters normally stayed at home if they lost faith in politics: “But today people have shown they can’t stay at home any longer. We won’t be ignored any more.”

The BBB’s election victory in the Netherlands has seen them cast as a fringe far-right party by the media. But are emission cutting strategies punishing small, family-owned farms while billionaires and corporations, facilitated by governments, greenwash their behaviour through an ESG Carbon Offset scam?