The Netherlands' Jan Peter Balkenende

HE IS a professor by trade, a thinker, nay: his website offers a seven-page lecture of his views on Dutch society, and that's just one in a five-part series. He looks the part too: with his owlish specs and schoolboy haircut, 46 going on 14, you'd guess. And his political experience? Well, Jan Peter Balkenende entered parliament all of four years ago, and became the leader of his Christian Democrats only last October—and that mainly for lack of anyone likelier to pull together a party hurt by scandal and, after eight years out of power, heading nowhere. Not that he looked likely to lead it anywhere much else in the general election due in May. Yet what is Mr Balkenende now? Prime minister designate of the Netherlands.

For that, he can thank, above all, the maverick Pim Fortuyn, whose party—well, “party”—burst into view, evicting Rotterdam's long-ruling Labour council, in local elections in March. Mr Fortuyn said aloud what many voters had not dared to say for themselves: that they were tired of crime, of ill-assimilated Muslim immigrants and, more widely, of orthodox politicians too busy talking cosily with each other to notice these discontents. Nationally, Labour, the Christian Democrats' historic rival, was already looking tired. Wim Kok and his “purple” coalition—his party, plus the free-market Liberals and left-leaning D66—had held office for eight years, and the popular Mr Kok, ready to retire, had handed party leadership to a less than dazzling heir. Now, suddenly, tiredness began to look like feet of clay.