More from the low countries, this time Belgium. There’s an article today in the NY Times on the rise of Belgium’s far right ‘Vlaams Belang’ . It’s interesting enough, so far as it goes, but there’s one point that the Times touches on but does not elaborate, merely noting that the party had changed its name (from Vlaams Blok) last year.

Well, as more skeptical readers of the New York Times will be unsurprised to discover, there’s more to that ‘name change’ than that paper chooses to disclose. Basically, early last year Belgium’s supreme court upheld a government ruling effectively banning Vlaams Blok (the party’s access to state funding – essential in Belgium – and television was barred) on the grounds that it was ‘racist’. The Vlaams Belang is the successor party specifically designed to get round (for now) this ban.

Now, as a political party, the Vlaams Belang leaves quite a lot to be desired and it certainly contains some unpleasant elements, but it would, one would have thought, have been of interest to Times readers to learn that it is the successor to a popular political party ‘banned’ in Belgium last year, the sort of ban that should be unacceptable in a free society.

And that in turn raises another question. Why is no longer fully democratic Belgium permitted to remain in NATO and the EU?