Thursday’s debate on the new government’s plans degenerated into a playground tiff for a time as prime minister Mark Rutte and PVV leader Geert Wilders exchanged insults as the floor of the lower house of parliament.

Referring to Wilders’ complaints about not being allowed to take part in the coalition talks, Rutte said the PVV deliberately sets out to make itself as unacceptable as possible to other parties.

Wilders, he said, is like ‘a woman who doesn’t want to be loved and therefore makes herself as unattractive as possible’.

The spurned Wilders immediately countered with: ‘Look who’s talking. Nobody knows if Mr Rutte ever had a woman’. To which Rutte replied: True. They don’t.’

Criticism

The ‘bit of banter’ as Wilders called it, evoked much laughter but there was criticism as well. Female MPs on the benches of the SP, GroenLinks and PvdA called the joke ‘sexist’ and ‘crude’.

But Wilders reportedly said later he was not sorry. ‘It was a good joke, both from Rutte and me. And if you don’t find it funny you’re a misery guts,’ he said. The prime minister didn’t comment.

It is not the first time unparliamentary language had been used by the two politicians. In 2011, Wilders told Rutte to ‘doe effe normaal’ or ‘act like a normal human being’.