SEVERAL YEARS ago the usually pragmatic Dutch stunned Europe by spawning a new far right in the shape of Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party. The Islam-bashing, Eurosceptic Mr Wilders has played a kingmaker role, first supporting and then toppling a minority Dutch cabinet. But as the resulting election on September 12th draws near, it is no longer Mr Wilders at centre stage: polls suggest his party will get only 18 of the 150 parliamentary seats. The spotlight has shifted to the far-left Socialist Party (SP), which may get as many as 38.

The politician who has taken Mr Wilders’s place and quite a few of his voters is Emile Roemer, an eternally smiling man who casually shrugs off euro-zone rules on budget deficits and promises to preserve the generous Dutch welfare system. Once a pariah in Dutch politics, the SP is now marching strong on a set of ideas that are as much of a throwback to the 1970s as the platform shoes that are much in fashion in Amsterdam.

The polls point to a neck-and-neck race between the SP and the liberal VVD for top spot. The political spectrum remains fractured, with no obvious majority emerging. But if the SP does become the biggest party Mr Roemer should have first shot at forming a cabinet, for the first time in his party’s 40-year history.

Tracing its roots to the split between Soviet and Chinese communism, the SP was once proudly Maoist. But it shed its Marxist-Leninist ideology at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, replacing it with messages of solidarity and human dignity. It has since slowly gained ground, going from two MPs in 1994 to nine in 2002 and then 25 in 2006. It slid back to 15 in 2010, but under Mr Roemer’s leadership its popularity has bounced back.

Some of this is down to Mr Roemer’s warm and friendly image and unforced man-of-the-people sense of humour that puts him in contrast with other Dutch politicians. But it also reflects a political agenda that responds to the fears of the voters. Without explaining how he would find the money, Mr Roemer promises both to safeguard the welfare state and to share the burden of paying for it more equally.

Mr Roemer shares his populist Eurosceptic and pro-welfare ideas with Mr Wilders, though his campaigning is more sophisticated. The SP is not against the European Union, but would slash its budget in half. Nor is it against the euro, only against excessively strict budget-deficit rules (and, by implication, against cuts at home to finance bail-outs abroad). Polls suggest that a considerable number of Mr Wilders’s voters are defecting to Mr Roemer’s camp.

Where the SP gathers most support is for consistency of views, says Maurice de Hond, a pollster who has long predicted that it will be the largest party. Rather than modernising, as the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) has done, the SP has moved to the heartland of social democracy abandoned by the PvdA, opposing rail and energy privatisation and attacking bankers as the cause of the financial crisis. “The voters believe the reality has proved the SP right and the establishment parties wrong,” says Mr de Hond. “And considering the SP has never been in charge before, they are willing to give them a chance.”

Whether that chance turns into forming a government is more doubtful. Dutch business has started an offensive against the SP, with more media carrying stories of the dangers of putting the country in the party’s hands. Mr Roemer and the VVD leader, Mark Rutte, who is also caretaker prime minister, have yet to take part in a debate. Mr Wilders may bounce back. Even if Mr Roemer ends up winning the election, he may lose the political fight of building a coalition. Still, two things seem certain: the process will take a long time and the next government will be even more reluctant than its predecessor to support big euro-zone bail-outs paid for by fiscal austerity at home.