The news from Hungary’s election is so good that I need to write about it, even if not all the implications are clear yet, and even in a disorganised and way, repeating lots of what others are saying.
Although the polls predicted Orban’s defeat, nothing I read foreshadowed the scale of the victory – a two-thirds majority which will allow the reversal of all of Orban’s constitutional changes. Some credit for this must go to JD Vance. The spectacle of a US vice-president appearing in Europe to complain about foreign influence must have been too absurd for voters to accept. Putin’s unsubtle interference allowed Peter Magyar to remind Hungarians of Russia’s previous crimes against Hungary.
Within Europe, the effect will be to isolate Putin’s last supporter in the EU, Slovakian PM Fico. It should now be possible to get rid of the veto power exercised so balefully by Orban, with Fico’s support, and to constrain financial aid to Fico’s government. That will enable an acceleration of Ukraine’s admission along with Moldova, while Serbia (still aligned with Russia) can return to the back of the queue.
More generally, it’s a huge blow to European Trumpism, already on the ropes after Trump’s repeated attacks on putative allies. Trump-Orban supporters like Farage in UK and AfD in Germany are trying to back away from their public statements of support, but we have rhetorical receipts. Conversely, those advocating a clean break with Trump, like Sanchez in Spain have ben strengthened.
Less directly, the result should accelerate Britain’s return to the EU. Brexit and Orbanism were parallel projects, and both have failed miserably in delivering the prosperity they promised. Moreover the result has confirmed the toxicity of Trumpism, even in one of Europe’s most conservative countries. Starmer has taken the first steps, finally admitting that Brexit was a disaster. Hopefully he will be gone soon, and his successor will be free to start the serious work of returning at least to the single market and something close to free movement.
Intellectually and financially, this is a disaster for the “post-liberal” far right, of which Vance has been the most prominent representative.
Under Orban, Hungary represented a beacon of Christian (more specifically Catholic) nationalism of the kind put forward by post-liberals like Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule. The voters’ rejection of the Orban government will be followed by thoroughgoing exposure of the corruption of his regime.
Orban was also a source of lavish grants and speaking gigs, ultimately paid for by long-suffering EU taxpayers. That’s all over now. Those who have taken those gigs will come under a lot more scrutiny. In Australia they include Tony Abbott, Alexander Downer, Brian Loughnane (former Liberal national director), Greg Sheridan and many less prominent but highly influential figures.
Most important, but less clear, are the implications for Trumpism in the US. The result is a double-edged sword. By showing that even an entrenched regime like Orban’s can be defeated in a democratic election, it gives us hope. But the lesson for the Trumpists is that democracy must be suppressed as soon as possible. An Orban-scale defeat in the 2026 midterms would make it very difficult to steal the presidency in 2028. Looking at the polls that’s quite likely unless the 2026 elections are suppressed, as Trump has previously suggested.
Doubtless there will be disappointments in the future. But, for the moment hope is in the ascendant.
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Alan White 04.13.26 at 4:23 am
Hear hear!!
0ldster 04.13.26 at 5:30 am
A good day for Ukraine, and all enemies of authoritarian autocrats.
I hope that the EU will now be able to swing its full weight behind supporting Ukraine in driving the Russian invaders from its territory.
MisterMr 04.13.26 at 6:11 am
My understanding is that Magyar, Orban’s successor, Is quite right leaning and not that distant from Orban, however he is more pro-EU and apparently pro democracy.
But for example he is quite cold on Ukraine.
So, let’s hope that he will take back some democracy tò Hungary, that already would be very good news; if there will be also other international effect of a push tò the left then even better, but I’m not so sure.
Tm 04.13.26 at 6:54 am
“Some credit for this must go to JD Vance. The spectacle of a US vice-president appearing in Europe to complain about foreign influence must have been too absurd for voters to accept. Putin’s unsubtle interference allowed Peter Magyar to remind Hungarians of Russia’s previous crimes against Hungary.”
Some credit certainly needs to go to Netanyahu. He was was one of the most prominent and most visible supporters of fervent antisemite Orban intervening in the election campaign: “Thank you for standing up for Western civilization, against this tide of radical, fanatical Muslims” (https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-praises-hungarys-viktor-orban-ahead-of-elections/ March 22)
I cannot fathom why Orban thought it would be a good idea to tie himself to Netanyahu and Trump while they were (are) waging another war of aggression in the Middle East, and driving up energy prices. He may have thought that his voters would be enthusiastic about holy war against Muslim infidels. That is certainly not the case, although some analysts seriously claimed that the Iran war created an advantage for Orban for reasons I cannot discern (https://tvpworld.com/92036944/how-the-iran-war-is-changing-hungarys-election-campaign). Orban has the ditinction of having all the major warmongers of our time, and for mysterious reasons, it didn’t save him.
I also wonder what Hungarian nationalists (of the sort who actually care about their nation) thought about being told by a whole parade of foreign leaders who to vote for. 21st century fascism is clearly a globalist (to use the bad word coined by the bad guys) ideological project that cares absolutely nothing about actual national self-determination and sovereignty. The charcteristic image of this ideological movement is US immigrant billionaires (Musk, now Thiel) lecturing Italian fascists in English about the need to keep their culture pure. And the cherry on the ice cream is US far right religious fundamentalists calling the Catholic Pope a heretic. (Hungary is culturally Catholic btw although less than half of the population identify as Christian).
https://sarajevotimes.com/vucic-le-pen-netanyahu-meloni-the-right-rallies-behind-orban-ahead-of-elections-in-hungary/
Tm 04.13.26 at 6:56 am
Trying again: Orban has the distinction of being endorsed by all the major warmongers of our time – Trump, Putin and Netanyahu -, and for mysterious reasons, it didn’t save him.
oldster 04.13.26 at 10:18 am
“The characteristic image of this ideological movement is US immigrant billionaires (Musk, now Thiel) lecturing Italian fascists in English about the need to keep their culture pure.”
The US can be blamed for many things, but when it comes to Musk and Thiel, part of the blame must be assigned to South Africa and to the sort of parents who embraced and supported it.
“Born in Germany [1957] , Thiel was taken to the US by his parents when he was one year old. In 1971, his family moved to South Africa, then South West Africa,[11] before moving back to the US in 1977.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel
The US record in opposing apartheid was far from spotless, but we did enough, esp. through USAID, that it was Musk’s first target when he had a chance to wreck things.
He’s still an apartheid-era South African, whatever his passport may say, and the same is true for Thiel.
engels 04.13.26 at 11:23 am
This reminds me a bit of Obama in 2008: lots of good vibes about Change and Hope (especially on the BBC news channel, which seems to have devoted their entire evening’s programming to the celebrations) without much detail about what that is going to consist in (although I don’t think Magyar is as “progressive” or distinct from the previous admin as Obama…) Good riddance to Orban all the same.
Britain’s return to liberalism and the loving arms of the EU will likely be smoothed by this:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/12/britain-single-market-rules-uk-eu-reset
<
blockquote> A new bill, which will bring into force the food and drink trade deal with the EU, will contain powers enabling the government to… quickly implement evolving single market rules if it determines it is in the national interest, without having to face full parliamentary scrutiny each time. The move is possible under so-called Henry VIII powers, named after the 1539 law that allowed the monarch to rule by decree…
Tm 04.13.26 at 12:05 pm
MisterMr: a push to the left cannot be expected from Magyar. He’s definitely right of center and he made a point of not allying with the left of center opposition – it would have hurt not helped him. Conversely, most opposition parties decided to not contest the election and leave the field to Magyar – apparently the election system is so rigged that the left parties would only have helped Orban by running – , and perhaps surprisingly, left liberal voters did vote for Magyar to get rid of Orban.
From what I have read, Magyar seems genuine about the values that he campaigned on – democracy, anticorruption, rule of law, Europe. Regarding Ukraine, Orban’s propaganda has told Hungarians that Magyar is going to send them off to war against Russia and this absurd narrative seems to have been effective. Shades of “Donald the dove”, only that the dove costume definitely doesn’t fit any more. I still don’t get it how so many Hungarians are (still) willing to vote for a government that aligns itself openly with Russian (and US) imperialism, after all that history.
Alex SL 04.13.26 at 10:18 pm
I am glad for Hungary, but if MisterMr has the measure of Magyar, this will only do so much.
More confusing is the optimism about the UK. Yes, Starmer may be gone soon, but how likely is it that he will be replaced by another Labour leader in sufficient time before the next election to achieve a turn-around, AND that the next Labour leader will be both willing and able to completely disavow and reverse all of Starmer’s reactionary policies that have cratered Labour with its own core supporters? If that isn’t likely, and it isn’t, how likely is it that the Greens win a majority? No, it seems much more likely that the next UK election will result in a 60% majority for what is currently called Reform, given the electoral system that can easily hand such a majority to a party that gets only 30% of the vote if the other part of the spectrum is sufficiently split.
And then things will get really interesting for the UK. First, Reform’s policies are to keep digging the hole that the country has dug for itself since 2016 ever deeper. Second, the political system of the UK is uniquely vulnerable to dictatorship, worse than Weimar Germany, worse even than the USA. In the absence of a constitution, there very few checks and balances apart from the House of Lords, who operate under the gentlemen’s agreement that they will not oppose anything the ruling party put into their election manifesto.
It is also, unfortunately, likely that more far-right autocrats will come to power all over the world in the next few years. The US attack on Iran and its immediate consequence are rippling around the world, leading to fuel scarcity and higher fuel prices, then soon food scarcity and higher food prices. Most swing voters are not smart enough to understand that their current governments can’t do very much about any of that; these voters can be comfortably modeled as: if things are getting worse, I will punish the government by voting for the loudest opposition party, to “send a signal”. In some cases, this may actually bring a right-wing government down. But wherever that loudest opposition party is the neonazis, we will see the next Orban establish himself.
Mike on the Internet 04.13.26 at 11:18 pm
OP, when you say “unless the 2026 elections are suppressed”, do you mean in the sense of suspended/postponed etc, or in the sense of subjected to various vote-suppressing shenanigans that tilt the results in the Republicans’ favour? Because they most certainly will be suppressed in the latter sense, as many shenanigans (e.g. gerrymandering) are already in place.
Tm 04.14.26 at 7:21 am
engels: “This reminds me a bit of Obama in 2008: lots of good vibes about Change and Hope”
Obama sincerely believed in the chimera of bipartisanship, which prevented him from being the change that he was elected for. An irony is that he was the preferred candidate of progressives because of his rhetoric of hope despite never actually campaigning on progressive reforms. Magyar’s whole campaign was about rolling back the system Orban and prosecuting wrongdoing. He has the majority to do what he promised and he has no incentive to hold back against Orban and his party and cronies.
I wonder who the 138 members are that Magyars party swept into parliament: are they all political newcomers? Where do they stand, for example on LGBTQ issues?
Alex: Zack Polanskis Green Party gives me hope. He’s offering substantive progressive policies and also is an excellent campaigner and communicator. That he might win the next election seems utopian, but it was also utopian for Farage to jump from winning 5 seats in the 2024 election to leading the polls. Perhaps I shouldn’t indulge in hope, but why should this sort of thing never be possible on the left? In polls, the Greens are now tied with Labour. Everything depends on whether Labour voters decide to stay on the sinking ship. They now have an alternative.
John Q 04.14.26 at 9:13 am
Mike @10 Ordinary shenanigans can be taken for granted, as you say.
OTOH, it wouldn’t need a full cancellation. More likely modes of suppression are seizing and destroying ballot boxes, certifying Republ losers as winners, ICE goons at polling places.
TM and Engels: Magyar has already told Orban’s cronies (President, Head of Supreme Court etc) to resign before they are impeached. And he has indicated he will join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, giving EU investigators capacity to probe fraud cases. I don’t think there’s much risk of a Biden go-slow, let alone an Obama reach across the aisle.
I’d imagine that flights from Budapest to Moscow and Washington will be booked solid with Fidesz officials looking to get themselves and their loot out of reach of Europe
Alex SL 04.14.26 at 10:09 am
Tm,
No, I don’t doubt that can happen. I merely meant it is highly unlikely to happen at the next UK election.
That being said: First, the left always plays politics on Hard Mode because all the billionaire-owned, mass media and social media are against them by default. And second, in my experience at least here in Australia, years of propaganda have convinced a LOT of centre-left voters, people whose theoretical policy preferences are now significantly to the left of Social Democrat or Labour parties and align pretty comfortably with the Greens, that the Greens are somehow not serious. Their take is not that what the Greens want is bad but they cannot be trusted to govern, for some unclear reason. That will be tough to overcome. I think it is easier in a system like Germany’s where people have seen the Greens as part of coalition governments without the world ending because of that.
engels 04.14.26 at 12:06 pm
Agree this is welcome and significant for Hungary (was mainly sceptical about the international repercussions) but here’s a mouthful of Magyar’s political smorgasbord (someone else can google some takes on the welfare state from this right-wing corporate lawyer who iirc used to have photo of Orban taped up in his bedroom before he joined his party).
https://www.budapesttimes.hu/hungary/magyar-government-unfit-to-handle-migration/
engels 04.14.26 at 12:09 pm
In UK a Green victory may be (organic tofu) pie in the sky but perhaps less so than Labour clinging on:
https://news.sky.com/story/greens-overtake-labour-in-sensational-poll-13514420
LFC 04.14.26 at 6:48 pm
Tm @11
My recollection of the 2008 Democratic primary campaign is that there were not wide policy differences between Obama and Hillary Clinton, who were the two main contenders. Also, the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment, can reasonably be called a progressive reform — not in the sense that a single-payer system would have been but in the sense that it significantly reduced the number of uninsured people.
notGoodenough 04.14.26 at 10:21 pm
While I don’t claim any deep expertise in Hungarian politics, one can hope that Orbán’s removal would be broadly positive – not only because of his personal politics, but also because of his role as a pillar of a wider right-wing political system. It remains to be seen what effect Magyar will have; my limited understanding is that even incremental changes (such as stepping back from culture-war governance and reducing corruption) would, if realised, represent meaningful progress, though of course the operative word is “if.”
Regarding the UK, the Green Party offers a relatively appealing platform combining environmental priorities with a broadly egalitarian economic and social programme, which appears to have translated into some notable gains. However, we have yet to see the kind of coordinated opposition that is often mobilised when political movements outside the austerity-and-crackdown consensus approach real power. One would hope that public discourse is now less receptive to such tactics, but historically it would be unwise to underestimate the lengths to which established power structures are willing to go.
Still, I retain a small measure of hope. After all, I doubt I could remain a socialist in Britain without a stubborn commitment to a better tomorrow, sustained through repeated defeat in the present.
BBA 04.14.26 at 10:55 pm
I don’t know if this teaches Americans anything about how to fight Trump. Tisza is another right-wing party, with few policy differences from Orban; their objections to his rule were more personal than political. The equivalent in America would be Democrats, after a series of humiliating election losses, dropping out of the race to back a Ted Cruz or Ron DeSantis type figure who will push the same anti-immigration, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, etc. agenda as Trump, whose sole redeeming quality will be not being Trump. This is a Pyrrhic victory if I’ve ever seen one.
Tm 04.15.26 at 6:57 am
Alex: “Their take is not that what the Greens want is bad but they cannot be trusted to govern, for some unclear reason. That will be tough to overcome. I think it is easier in a system like Germany’s where people have seen the Greens as part of coalition governments without the world ending because of that.”
It might be the other way round – Polanski is seen as a credible alternative because the Green Party has never been in power. In Germany, what is really amazing is that the left opposition is completely incapable of benefiting from the incompetence of the Merz government. Merz is, no exaggeration, the worst Chancellor in FRG history and he’s deeply unpopular. But neither the Green nor the Left party (which has been a governing party in several East German states) are rising in the polls, and the SPD is in full suicide mode. Our whole political class seems to be unusually incompetent. I have no idea how these people ever got into leadership positions.
Regarding the UK, I think – but that’s just an impression – that British Labour voters are sufficiently fed up to vote for another party, the real issue is the concern that the Greens cannot win and a vote for them would be wasted (which brings me to the question why anybody still votes for the LibDems). But the Greens have already shown they can win in a byelection.
Omega Centauri 04.15.26 at 10:09 pm
BBA:
I don’t think it’s quite a dire as you think. He broke from Orban in 2024, after Orban freed a convicted child molester. He wants to be closer to the EU and further from Putin. He calims to be against propaganda, shutting down state media until it can be fixed.
Clearly his past as a member of Fidez means he isn’t -or wasn’t anything close to liberal. His new coalition includes the left of center, so I would thing he has to move towards the center. We will see, but his honeymoon will likely be short if he doesn’t move that way.
Tm 04.16.26 at 6:22 am
BBA: The party system in Hungary is completely different from the US. In Hungary, the left of center opposition has been next to irrelevant since the 2010 election. In part due to gerrimandering, but also their combined vote share didn’t exceed about 25% in those elections. Orban didn’t score a narrow win with a lot of luck, as Trump did, he won absolute popular majorities twice, he really was popular and remained so for almost 16 years, and for whatever reason there is no competitive left opposition (as there is in the US! Yes, the Dems count as left.)
What Democrats can nevertheless learn from Magyar: running hard against corruption and power abuse and promising to prosecute wrong-doing by the government is effective.
LFC 16: Obama didn’t run as a progressive period. Whether Clinton’s platform was more progressive we don’t really need to get into but suffice it to say that Obama ran against Clinton’s health care proposal because it included an insurance mandate, and then ended up implementing it because no reform would have made sense otherwise, and his initial opposition was a gift to Republicans who accused him of breaking his campaign promise. And Obama’s government was otherwise characterized by his self-humiliating attempts at bipartisanship while McConnell constantly gave him the middle finger. He was elected to make a clean break from his predecessor and make “change” happen but temperamentally he was the wrong person for the task, tragically.
engels 04.16.26 at 11:23 am
Meanwhile Britain’s sensible left is about to start melting down wheelchairs to build Storm Shadows
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2194139/lord-robertson-defence-welfare-cuts-britain
lurker 04.16.26 at 1:30 pm
“it seems much more likely that the next UK election will result in a 60% majority for what is currently called Reform” Alex SL, 9
Labour could simply do what the minor parties did in Hungary and not run any candidates, if they were willing to put country before party and let the Greens win.
engels 04.16.26 at 3:57 pm
if they were willing to put country before party
Unfortunately the clique currently running Labour (into the ground) are not even willing to put party before faction, evidenced inter alia by their blocking the obviously more capable Burnham from contesting the leadership.