THE HAGUE: Anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders Sunday brushed off a slump in polls saying he was confident of a strong showing in upcoming elections, which he vowed would also boost Europe’s far-right.
Just 10 days before the March 15 vote, the firebrand politician and his Freedom Party (PVV) appears to have slipped into second place behind the Liberal party of incumbent Prime Minister Mark Rutte after months of leading the opinion polls.
“I am confident we will all have excellent results,” Wilders told a gaggle of mainly foreign journalists, referring also to France’s far-right presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen.
“Even if that will not be the case, the genie will not go back into the bottle... certainly things will change in Europe,” he insisted.
In an odd press conference, Wilders gathered reporters from international organizations in a street in an Amsterdam industrial area, surrounded by a heavy security detail of uniformed and plain-clothed police officers.
Boosted by the polarizing debate over immigration, and initially by the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential race, Wilders had been leading polls since late last year.
The Dutch vote is seen as a key litmus test of the rise of populist and far-right parties ahead of other national elections to be held across Europe later this year.
But the latest collated polls by the Dutch website Peilingwijzer (Poll indicator) from seven different agencies on Saturday showed Rutte’s VVD party would now win 23 to 27 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament, with the PVV set to garner 22-26 seats if elections were held today.
“Many of my colleagues (opponents) today are now copying our thoughts. The whole campaign today in Holland... is about immigration, national identity, values and the EU,” said Wilders.
“They are copy-cats and that’s why we are losing votes,” he said.
The 53-year-old has courted controversy with his hard-line anti-Islam, anti-immigrant stance and his incendiary insults against Moroccans and Turks.
He has vowed in his party’s one-page manifesto that if elected he would ban the sale of Qur'ans, close mosques and Islamic schools, shut Dutch borders and ban Muslim migrants.
Anti-Islam Dutch MP Wilders upbeat despite polls' slide
Anti-Islam Dutch MP Wilders upbeat despite polls' slide
Related
SpaceX acquires xAI in record-setting deal as Musk looks to unify AI and space ambitions
- The deal is the biggest M&A transaction of all time
- Deal values xAI at $250 billion, SpaceX at $1 trillion
Elon Musk said on Monday that SpaceX has acquired his artificial-intelligence startup xAI in a record-setting deal that unifies Musk’s AI and space ambitions by combining the rocket-and-satellite company with the maker of the Grok chatbot. The deal, first reported by Reuters last week, represents one of the most ambitious tie-ups in the technology sector yet, combining a space-and-defense contractor with a fast-growing AI developer whose costs are largely driven by chips, data centers and energy. It could also bolster SpaceX’s data-center ambitions as Musk competes with rivals like Alphabet’s Google, Meta, Amazon-backed Anthropic and OpenAI in the AI sector.
The transaction values SpaceX at $1 trillion, and xAI at $250 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI’s mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!” Musk said. The purchase of xAI sets a new record for the world’s largest M&A deal, a distinction held for more than 25 years when Vodafone bought Germany’s Mannesmann in a hostile takeover valued at $203 billion in 2000, according to data compiled by LSEG. The combined company of SpaceX and xAI is expected to price shares at about $527 each, another person familiar with the matter said. SpaceX was already the world’s most valuable privately held company, last valued at $800 billion in a recent insider share sale. XAI was last valued at $230 billion in November, according to the Wall Street Journal. The merger comes as the space company plans a blockbuster public offering this year that could value it at over $1.5 trillion, two people familiar with the matter said.
SpaceX, xAI and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The deal further consolidates Musk’s far-flung business empire and fortunes into a tighter, mutually reinforcing ecosystem – what some investors and analysts informally call the “Muskonomy” – which already includes Tesla, brain-chip maker Neuralink and tunnel firm the Boring Company. The world’s richest man has a history of merging his ventures together. Musk folded social media platform X into xAI through a share swap last year, giving the AI startup access to the platform’s data and distribution. In 2016, he used Tesla’s stock to buy his solar-energy company SolarCity.
The agreement could draw scrutiny from regulators and investors over governance, valuation and conflicts of interest given Musk’s overlapping leadership roles across multiple firms, as well as the potential movement of engineers, proprietary technology and contracts between entities.
SpaceX also holds billions of dollars in federal contracts with NASA, the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, which all have some authority to review M&A transactions for national security and other risks.
