At 38, Rob Jetten , with his confident smile and “We can do it” slogan, is on course to become the Netherlands’s youngest prime minister.

His liberal-progressive D66 party almost tripled its number of seats in parliament in the October 29 general election.

Dutch far-right firebrand Geert Wilders suffered significant losses in the vote, as his anti-immigration, anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) shed 11 seats, returning to the opposition after a hobbling first stint in a coalition government.

While this result was cast as a victory for the centre over the far right, and a good omen for Europe’s liberal front, experts sound a note of caution.

“There was a return to the centre in the sense that a number of centre parties gained in these elections,” Leiden University professor Bernard St

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