Two weeks today, the Netherlands will go the polls to elect new members for the 150 seat lower house of parliament. Here’s a round up of the latest campaign news.

Debate of the day

The most noteworthy television appearance by a political leader on Tuesday seems to have been that of Jan Roos on late night chat show Pauw en Jinek. Roos leads VNL, a party formed by two PVV parliamentarians who quit after Geert Wilders’ ‘fewer Moroccans’ speech.

Roos is best known as a former reporter on populist tv current affairs show Powned and has made the erosion of Dutch norms and values a central part of his campaign. But he came under heavy fire on the show for his anti-gay, anti-women approach while a Powned reporter and was slammed as a hypocrite for constantly trying to out prime minister Mark Rutte as gay.

‘Jinek the fury corners Jan Roos’, was the headline in the NRC. Fellow guest and D66 leader Alexander Pechtold said Roos was ‘as low as you can get’.

VVD and climate change

According to Trouw, a Dutch climate change sceptic was able to get a section about the impact of climate change removed from the VVD’s election manifesto. VVD supporter Gert-Jaap van Ulzen, who regards climate change as ‘a minor problem’, was able to persuade the VVD to drop the section at the party’s conference last November, the paper says.

Although the change was minor, it did mean that one of the few explicit notes about the potentially disastrous effects of climate change on the Netherlands disappeared, the paper said.

In a reaction, the VVD said the contents of its manifesto had been finalised in a democratic manner.

Poll of polls

The latest poll of polls, published on Wednesday morning, shows a further drop in support for Geert Wilders’ PVV. The anti-Islam party is now on target to win 24 seats in parliament, one fewer than the ruling VVD. This means they are effectively level pegging, says pollster Tom Louwerse.

Support for 50Plus has now halved to three following a string of blunders by leader Henk Krol. His role in the campaign has now been reduced – although the two are apparently not connected.

The new poll of polls puts the CDA on 18 seats, D66 and GroenLinks on 17 and the SP on 13. The position of the PvdA (Labour party) remains stable at around 13 seats.