Belgium's Flemish far-right party has scored strongly in weekend local elections despite being scorned and ostracised by Belgium's political class. Based on partial results of the provincial councils on Monday, the anti-immigrant party picked up 7.6 percentage points to reach 20.8 per cent across northern Dutch-speaking Flanders and surged well beyond its traditional stronghold of Antwerp.Yet, opponents point to Antwerp, the cradle of its popularity, where the party suffered its only sizable setback, dropping to second place behind the Socialists of incumbent Patrick Janssens, the mayor. The mayor's personalised campaign gave the Flemist Socialist Party (SPA) 35.3 per cent of the vote, almost double the 19.5 per cent it won in the last election six years ago, while Flemish Interest only added half a percentage point to 33.5 per cent.
The "symbolic defeat" of Vlaams Belang in Antwerp "was more important than its progress in the rest of Flanders", said Pascal Delwit, researcher at the University of Brussels. The party has "perhaps reached its ceiling", he said, notably given that it lost four percentage points in Flanders from the last general election in 2004.
The Belgian media also welcomed Vlaams Belang's failure in Antwerp. "Antwerp deserves better than the far right ... Belgium can breathe again," wrote Beatrice Delvaux, editor of the newspaper Le Soir, whose front page headline was "Stop right there!"