The more sensible of his ideas have been represented in the VVD and to a lesser extent other parties on the right/centre all along, going back to the nineties before Wilders himself started his career in the VVD. The difference is that parties like the VVD are governing parties, so they have to be a little realistic about what they put in their programmes. Wilders can afford to release a one-page party program with manifestly unconstitutional proposals like banning the Qur'an - it's not about suggesting actual policies or ideas, it's just about carping from the sidelines.

And as for not accepting people who don't respect full equality for women and gay people - do keep in mind that the Dutch aren't all so liberal and secular. They have an ultraconservative Calvinist minority (in a handful of municipalities they're even a plurality or majority), represented by a party which even refused to allow women to be candidates for political office, until 4 years ago when they were forced to change their policy. Now their line is that women are allowed to be candidates, but the party still prefers that they don't hold political offices. Should those also be kicked out then?

True. And who knows, but I don't really see that happening any time soon.

Turkey stopped even wanting to join the EU a good while ago - or at least, Erdogan's government did. It's just they don't want the insult of being rejected by Europe, they want to reject Europe themselves - while of course maintaining the economic benefits of the free trade area.

In this particular case, according to one poll I saw, an impressive 86 percent of the Dutch supported Rutte's position versus Turkey in this spat - in other words, Turkey behaving this way benefits whoever happens to be in power and can make a big fuss about protecting the national honour against nasty foreign governments.