The recent Dutch elections were pretty similar. Conservatives (VVD) are still the biggest party, though they lost some seats and at least don't have a majority of seats. The labor party (PvDA) which had been supporting the VVD was hit very hard, since they had turned against their own traditional support base in the process. An intellectualist party (D66) made pretty big gains, but is still a pretty small party. And the xenophobia/hatred party (PVV) started fairly small and got smaller. Most of the small and local parties gained a bit due to labor supporters jumping ship.
So here there was some progress here at least, and the labor party seems to have finally learned an extremely important lesson and is now telling the conservatives where to shove some of their proposals. I think a lot of the difference may be cultural and/or educational. In the US and UK, it seems like a great many people are happy to believe in various fairy tales: trickle-down economics, the just-world hypothesis, or that repressing and marginalizing the poor won't eventually have consequences. In the Netherlands, virtually no-one seems to be impressed by supposed cost-cutting (preventive health-care, contraception) which will have far greater costs later, and there's little or no rejection of the notion that anyone can end up having financial problems for a variety of valid reasons.
And I got to go vote for the first time as a non-citizen resident ... for the local water board
