It has become the ‘clever’ observation to make about this week’s election in the Netherlands that the while the populist demagogue Geert Wilders is attracting all the international headlines, he is in fact just a political sideshow. But this spectacularly misses the point about Mr Wilders, whose success reflects a rightwards shift in Dutch politics seen in the decision to block the Turkish foreign minister from campaigning among the his diaspora last weekend.

Those who would dismiss Mr Wilders as a eurosceptic fantasy take comfort from fact that the “Dutch Donald Trump” – same big hair, but even more stridently Islamophobic – is fading in the polls. He now looks unlikely to beat the VVD party of Mark Rutte, the sitting Dutch prime minister, as many had feared. Even in the unlikely event that Mr Wilders does come top and wins 20 or more seats in the 150-seat legislature, they note reassuringly that Mr Wilders can never get power because the other main parties have already vowed to club together to keep him out.

But that is to misunderstand how Mr Wilders wields power. The persistent attraction of divisive figures like Mr Wilders - who was convicted last December of inciting hatred against Moroccans - has weakened mainstream leaders like Mr Rutte. He felt he had little choice but to take a tough line with Turkey, in the process boosting the same anti-foreigner, identitarian politics that Mr Wilders has made his trademark. (In another context, this is the same Mr Rutte who earlier this year put adverts in the main Dutch newspapers warning migrants to “be normal or be gone”, again in order to outflank Mr Wilders.)