IN THE wake of the electoral victories of the Brexit campaign and Donald Trump, right-wing populism in the rich world has appeared unstoppable. In both the Netherlands and France, conservative nationalists have consistently led polls. However, these movements’ momentum seems to have been halted at last. On March 15th Geert Wilders’s anti-immigration Party for Freedom (PVV) was dealt a surprising setback in the Dutch parliamentary election: rather than winning the most seats, as many analysts projected, it is expected to finish second. While the outcome is sure to disappoint the far right, the PVV can still argue that it improved on its performance in the 2012 vote.

Whether Mr Wilders’s party was placed first or second was primarily a symbolic question: either way, it had little chance of taking power. Both the ruling Liberals (VVD) and every other sizeable party have ruled out collaborating with the PVV. Mark Rutte, who has been prime minister since 2010, is the likeliest candidate to form the country’s next government. Although his VVD lost eight seats, it is set to remain the largest by a comfortable margin, winning 33 seats to the PVV’s 20.

Forming a government will take months. The most likely combination is a centre-right coalition involving VVD, CDA and D66, propped up either by the Greens or the smaller Christian parties. Perhaps the biggest winner in the election is the GreenLeft party, which is expected to win 14 seats, a gain of ten. Its leader, the 30-year-old Jesse Klaver, has argued in favour of a national identity centred on tolerance, openness and internationalism. He argued those values were under siege from the right.

In physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Similarly, in politics, both GreenLeft’s strong showing and Emmanuel Macron’s rise in French polls suggest that the threat posed by right-wing populists has sparked resurgent interest in defending liberalism.

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