Viktor Orbán Falls

I was expecting to write this post later tonight rather than you seeing it this Monday morning. Whilst all the polling had suggested that Viktor Orbán was heading for a massive defeat, there was a possibility that his Fidesz party was laying the groundwork to contest the election and that the end result would be exceptionally messy.

So whilst I was pretty sure, based on reporting, that he was going to lose, I was surprised to see that late last night he phoned his opponent Péter Magyar and conceded. Whilst in doing so it spares his country the agonies of what would have happened had he attempted to hold on, and whilst accepting the end means he leaves office with a measure of dignity, we also have to remember that Viktor Orbán has spent much of the past sixteen years working hard to ensure he would never face this day.

Viktor Orbán after all demonstrated the flaw at the heart of the European Union’s accession process when he realised that whilst the European Union can insist upon any number of reforms and conditions to get inside the club, once you are in you can reverse course and weaponise the bloc’s need for unanimity to cripple any attempts to hold you to account if you decide to turn against the very principles the Union is founded upon. Orbán thus set about turning Hungary into an illiberal democracy, in fact in many ways he was a pioneer of the concept.

Whilst there can be much debate about the precise meaning of the term, an illiberal democracy is one in which the governing force (usually of the extreme right) hollows out the constitutional constraints the state places on the government of the day and uses all the tools at its disposal to weaken and delegitimise the opposition.

These include such moves as compromising the independence of the judiciary to avoid challenging your actions (and in the most advanced cases, turning the judiciary into a barely disguised tool with which to persecute your opponents), restricting the activities of the media to ensure the government line not only has precedence but is the sole line most people hear, gerrymandering or otherwise putting your thumb on the scales of elections to ensure your party is perpetually in power and of course framing an ‘out’ group of enemies who must be opposed at all costs in an existential battle for the nation’s future.

On all of that, Orbán blazed the trail.

Many European political leaders on the far right have sought to emulate Orbán, and many travelled to Budapest last month in a show of support for their political role model as this Guardian article records.

Marine Le Pen has called Viktor Orbán “an exceptional leader” and Geert Wilders hailed “a lion on a continent led by sheep” as Europe’s far-right figureheads rallied round Hungary’s prime minister before an election that polls suggest he may lose…

“Hungary has become a symbol in Europe of a proud and sovereign people’s resistance against oppression,” Le Pen, the parliamentary leader of France’s National Rally (RN), told a gathering of EU-sceptical leaders in Budapest on Monday…

Wilders, the head of the far-right Dutch Freedom party (PVV), told the so-called Patriots’ Grand Assembly – named after the nationalists’ political group in the European parliament – that Orbàn had “shown what it means to stand tall”.

Even Argentina’s Javier Milei showed up to offer his support, saying that “Whatever Hungary decides will resonate throughout Europe…When a leader like Viktor Orban takes up that fight without asking permission, he becomes a beacon for all of us who refuse to accept that the West’s destiny is one of managed decline”.

But everything Orbán pioneered, one man has taken and attempted to implement on a far grander scale and with a much more far-reaching impact. Donald Trump has taken a keen interest in Hungary’s election; he even dispatched vice-president JD Vance to Hungary a few days ago (prior to Vance’s abortive peace talks with Iran in Islamabad) in an attempt to rally support for the beleaguered leader. That the visit had no impact and that Orbán has been defeated going to sting Trump. This article from Christopher Armitage emphasies the depth of the connection and how what Orbán did was replicated by those who came after and just WHY he was so important…

Orbán has had sixteen years. He rewrote the constitution, captured the courts, absorbed the press, and redrew the electoral map in his own favor. He completed the project Trump is currently attempting, with a sixteen-year head start and no meaningful opposition left standing. If Hungarian voters can remove him today anyway, it will represent the fall of a fascist canary in a worldwide coal mine.

Trump will not face the ignominy of being ejected by American voters (again) but he may one day be able to watch and see how an illiberal legacy maybe dismantled and the rule of law restored. I hope it gives him a sense of the impermanence of his own actions and the fragility of any legacy, his own most of all given the impatient zeal amongst his political opponents to undo what he has wrought and begin repairing the damage he has done. He may yet see the complete repudiation of all he has tried to do, even if the task of restoring what he has destroyed will take many, many years.

As for Hungary, the new leader Peter Magyar, was received rapturously by serving European leaders last night who are clearly relieved that Orbán has been removed from power by his own voters. They are hoping for a more constructive relationship with the new Hungarian government, though Magyar will doubtless be busy for a long time to come. Not only must they reckon with all the economic issues that are currently bedevilling every other country in the world, but they will have to break the stranglehold Orbán’s Fidesz party has over the apparatus of state.

Sheer self-interest would surely dictate Hungary’s new rulers will be keen on breaking Fidesz’s hold over the various institutions in Hungary, though it remains to be seen how successful he will be.

Now, I make no grand claim to any special knowledge of Hungarian politics. I know little of the intricacies of the country beyond the general history most of us would know.

But I do know what Orbán represented and his importance to the far right in the west. Remember, all those leaders want to emulate him and yet last night he stood on stage, defeated and looking somewhat broken at the verdict his voters had delivered upon him. Surely each of them will watch that, even those of them currently on an upwards trajectory, and feel that maybe one day, they too will stand defeated before a bank of cameras wondering where it all went wrong.

So I am happy to see him defeated, it proves to me that all those budding authoritarians who wish to walk the same path Orbán trod can look to the end and see that that path ends not in their own version of the ‘end of history’ and the triumph of illiberalism and nativism, but in yet another turning of the wheel.