If you believe that the big divide in politics today is no longer between left and right, but between a post-ideological establishment on the one hand and a “fringe” grown much too large to be labelled as such on the other, then this week’s referendum result in the Netherlands offers a perfect illustration.

Yet the set-up, backstory and legal status of the referendum is far too confusing for the result to be chalked up simply as a vote against the EU. As the leading liberal newspaper NRC put it: “A simple no, complex answers”.

Dutch referendum voters overwhelmingly reject closer EU links to Ukraine Read more

With a turnout just north of the required 30%, almost two-thirds of Dutch voters came out against the association agreement between the EU and Ukraine – around 2.5 million people out of a population of 17 million. What did these voters mean, and does their vote represent a clear repudiation of the European project – as was quickly claimed by both the anti-EU campaigner Geert Wilders and the Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage?

This is very hard to say. The organisers of the Dutch referendum were highly controversial. The referendum was the initiative of GeenStijl (“No Style”), an immensely successful blog whose outlook and methods are a mix of Charlie Hebdo, Jackass and Gawker. It was joined by a prominent young philosopher called Thierry Baudet, who recently published a book exploring “female masturbation, sexual emancipation, and the crisis of masculinity in modern times”.

This motley crew of attention-seekers campaigned alongside the far left Socialist party – currently polling better than the Social Democrats. And of course with Wilders, who is currently under investigation for incitement after asking a crowd of supporters whether they “wanted more or fewer Moroccans”. The answer “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!” elicited the promise: “Then let us take care of that.”

This is one reason why the result is so difficult to interpret. How many sane Eurosceptic voters did abstain in the hope of keeping the turnout low enough for the result to be void, thereby denying the organi​sers​ their victory? How many pro-EU voters did the same? The ardently anti-EU party of Wilders is doing extremely well in the polls, but so is the equally ardently pro-EU liberal party of D66.

And what did people vote for or against in the first place? You can be in favour of the European project while believing that a war-torn and thoroughly corrupt country of 42 million people with 5% negative growth in 2015 is simply too much to take on board, at least at the moment. Or you can be in favour of Ukraine eventually joining the EU, precisely because you think that this will fatally weaken the organisation.

This will give the anti-EU camp more ammunition to claim that 'the elites' are doing what they want anyway

In this respect the Dutch referendum compares extremely negatively with the upcoming British referendum on EU membership. There, at least, the question is straightforward. The out camp has enlisted at least some serious people making serious arguments – at least some of the time. Once the vote is cast, the result is immediately clear: Britain leaves or Britain stays.

Contrast this to the mess the Dutch government now finds itself in. Ratified by all EU member states except the Netherlands, the agreement with Ukraine had provisionally come into force already. It is entirely unclear what happens next, especially since the Netherlands currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU. This left the helpless Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte to announce after the result: “With such a victory for the no camp, ratification cannot go ahead without discussion.”

The most likely scenario is now for the Netherlands to negotiate a number of mostly symbolic opt-outs from the agreement in Brussels. This will give the anti-EU camp more ammunition to claim that “the elites” are doing what they want anyway, that “the will of the people” is being ignored again, and that the only way for the Dutch people to be safe is not cooperation with other countries on the continent, but isolation and separation from them.

It is telling that nobody in the Netherlands has called the referendum result a wake-up call for EU policymakers or pro-EU political parties. If even after Europe’s financial crisis and the refugee disaster, these are still not awake then they must be in a coma. Yet the question for every believer in the European project is more acute than ever: how to make the case for an organisation that over the past few years has proved unable to get either its borders or its monetary system under control?