It’s their election, not ours. The Dutch went to the polls and made their electoral choices based on their experiences living life in the Netherlands. CNN is saying, with this headline and story, that the Dutch are “wrong”. Relative to who or what? What CNN wanted for the election outcome? The voters are not “wrong” – they did what democracy asks them to do – make a choice.

By defining the outcome of a democratic election as a “populist problem”, CNN is telling us that we cannot trust democracy.

A more useful story might address why the election in The Netherlands and the election in Argentina, both this week, moved towards conservative government, as did Italy last year.

CNN implies that democratically elected leaders – if you disagree with them – must be “contained”:

The EU is generally good at containing these sorts of leaders. In some cases it can soften their impact by dangling financial carrots or assistance with policies aimed at domestic audiences, such as border control.

However, having them inside the tent can also lead to problems.

Effectively, CNN is saying that democracy is wrong – and the will of the citizens in those countries must be controlled by outside forces and presumably more enlightened technocratic elite like those that work for CNN?

The above is truly an opinion piece masquerading as news – indeed, they do label it “analysis” but not “opinion”. This is a sly trick the media uses all the time – inserting “analysis” stories among their news reports. It is an easy way to insert opinions into the news stream.

(I am not Dutch and I have no opinion on Dutch elections, candidates or who wins. I am aware that Geert Wilders is well to the right. But the Dutch people made their own decisions.)