Left-winger uses Fortuyn formula to lead Dutch election race

He is young, charismatic and might just cause an upset in next week's Dutch general elections. Eight months after the murder of Pim Fortuyn, an anti-immigration campaigner, many voters in the Netherlands have fallen for another energetic political newcomer, this time one from the centre-left, rather than a maverick from the right.

The rise of Wouter Bos, a 39-year-old former executive with Shell who leads the Labour Party (PvdA), seems to herald a return to the pre-Fortuyn days when the big parties ruled the roost. But that is only part of the story. In their scramble for votes, the established political parties, including the PvdA, have taken up Mr Fortuyn's pet subjects of law and order and immigration, and fringe candidates have imitated his publicity-seeking antics.

The once-staid world of Dutch politics remains in ferment and the Netherlands is still struggling to fill the vacuum caused by the premature death of Mr Fortuyn. That is partly because, after nine months of feuding, his party has haemorrhaged support. Forged in the image of its camp, Bentley-driving, dog-loving founder, the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) was left rudderless when Mr Fortuyn was shot last May in the Hilversum media park.

It garnered a huge sympathy vote in the subsequent general elections, seizing 26 of 150 seats, and entering a coalition government with the Christian Democrat leader, Jan-Peter Balkenende, and the Liberal Party (VVD). But the oppositionist LPF failed miserably in government, rowing constantly until the coalition tottered, prompting next week's elections. The LPF, which last year harvested 1.6 million votes, is expected to win no more than seven seats.

Potential successors to Mr Fortuyn have cut increasingly desperate figures. Winny de Jong, once tipped as a potential LPF leader, split with the party to form her own Conservative group and last week appeared scantily clad in a raunchy magazine. In the accompanying interview she mused on what to do if a man asked to sleep with her in return for his vote. "I couldn't start doing that, or else everyone would want to do it," Ms de Jong said. "Imagine I got 300,000 votes and I did it with 10 per night. I would be busy for eight years."

Emile Ratelband, a former baker and self-help guru who has styled himself as the new Fortuyn, has toured mosques, confronting immigrant youths with a message that they must make their own success. Yet Mr Ratelband's infant party has found it hard to make an impact because the political establishment has cut the ground deftly from under the feet of LPF and its ilk.

The big parties have homed in on issues such as crime, immigration and racial integration. Mr Fortuyn's catchphrase that the Netherlands is "full" has been echoed by the leader of the VVD, the former finance minister, Gerrit Zalm. The Volkskrant newspaper says a country that once saw immigrants as "underdogs", and people opposed to immigration as "racists" is now dividing the population into two categories: "threatened citizens and dangerous newcomers".

Peter Van Ham, deputy director of studies at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, said: "The issues of security, law and order and integration in a multicultural society have been taken up by the mainstream parties. There are difference between the Liberals and the PvdA but, before, these issues were not discussed in anything other than a politically correct way. Problems of lack of integration were seen more as a failure of the bureaucracy. Now the burden is more on these people."

Until recently, the Christian Democrat Prime Minister, Mr Balkenende, was expected to return to power in coalition with the VVD. But neither Mr Balkenende, who jokes about his resemblance to Harry Potter, nor the dry Mr Zalm has caught the imagination of a public whose emotions were stirred last year by the charismatic Mr Fortuyn.

Enter Mr Bos who has combined sensitivity to issues such as crime and immigration with a good TV manner and a winning smile. The 39-year-old economist and former state secretary for finance has become the darling of the media and an apparent hit with housewives and younger women. His rugged looks led one commentator to compare him to Crocodile Dundee, and another newspaper said the overtly gay Mr Fortuyn had described Mr Bos as "very fanciable".

The PvdA leader has injected glamour in an otherwise dull campaign reviving the fortunes of a party that suffered badly last year. There have been other surprises such as the success of the Socialist Party, which wants 72 per cent income tax on high earners, to take the Netherlands out of Nato and abolish first-class train seats. It is predicted to win 13 seats.

But overall the campaign has been marked by a lack of cutting edge. With PvdA politicians accused of having demonised Mr Fortuyn, the atmosphere has been kept artificially low-key as rival candidates smile across TV studios at each other, calmly debating their differences.

On Friday the mood changed when the VVD, which stands to lose from the PvdA, launched a frontal attack on Mr Bos (who says he does not want to become Prime Minister even if his party finishes first next week). The PvdA leader had, Mr Zalm said, "told lies" about his programme.

Only one outcome is assured: ideas Mr Fortuyn championed from the fringe are now part of the centre ground.