LABOUR was urged today to promote the success of multiculturalism following this week’s shock far-right election victory in the Netherlands.

Anti-racism campaigners have called for an organised movement against racial division as Dutch Islamophobe Geert Wilders began coalition talks.

Mish Rahman, a vice-chairman of Momentum and leading Muslim voice for the party, told the Morning Star: “The demonisation of migrants, Muslims and vulnerable communities by politicians and media as well as neoliberal governments — which do not provide solutions for struggling working-class communities in a cost-of-living crisis — has led to the emboldened rise of far-right populism.

“In the UK, successive home secretaries, from Patel to Braverman, have stoked this fire — the Labour Party has to be careful that they don’t add to this division and instead should promote the success of multiculturalism and the positive role our diverse communities play.”

Wilders’s Freedom party (PVV) won more seats than any other party in Wednesday’s vote. It follows the triumph of the far right in other European countries including Italy. 

The trend has been reflected in Britain, with the election result coming just weeks after the departure of the widely reviled home secretary Suella Braverman, and the defeat in the courts of her Rwanda deportation and detention plan.

Mr Wilders has linked Muslim immigration with terrorism and called for a ban on mosques and the Koran.

He also spoke in London at a 2018 demonstration demandingTommy Robinson’s release from imprisonment for contempt of court after filming outside a trial in Leeds.

Stand up to Racism co-convener Weyman Bennett said: “The intensification, by governments and parties of the mainstream, of brutal anti-migrant, anti-refugee, racist policies and vile scapegoating rhetoric, with Islamophobia as the lynchpin, is opening up ground for the far right, who are vying to grow their organisation and influence and win political legitimacy.

“The answer — the lesson for us here, approaching our own general election — is to build mass, broad, anti-racist and anti-fascist opposition on the streets, in our workplaces, colleges and communities to block the progress of the far-right threat.”

Ewout van den Berg, of Dutch anti-racist group Platform Stop Racisme, added: “The task for the left is now to unite the different movements and defend against the attacks and racism by a likely Wilders government.”