Author Archives: Theo Brown

We often struggle to comprehend issues beyond saying we can only do X and can’t do Y. This isn’t just struggles about what policy we talk about, but a whole series of issues, being more Left or Right, defending held seats to building more. We forget that we have many, many facets, and that they can get bigger if we think bigger; becoming that big tent, being a movement, being a complicated, growing party.

But in April 2026, the Hungarians successfully proved that you can in fact have your campaign cake and eat it, under much harsher, first-past-the-post-on-steroids conditions, with a hugely well organised, well funded, nay, international, Far-Right coalition against them. TISZA under Magyar Peter managed to mobilise everyone from the centre right to the far left to win a historic 2/3rds majority from nothing, and hold that level of popularity as I write. When we put this into perspective, our hurdles are slightly smaller.

I have listed a series of strategies that the Hungarian TISZA Party, with Magyar Peter, successfully pulled off. I hope these lessons help build the ability to take advantage of all the skills and people our party not only has, but could have, with broader horizons.

The Cost of Living, Health Care, and Europe, three things which we’ve run on in the past were central to the TISZA message. It also poked big holes in their opposition’s government style and strategy, whilst being shamelessly populist and implementable. They also did stunts (a winter heating support campaign) which was not only wildly successful but built a fantastic narrative about a hands-on, proactive, caring leadership willing to break the mould.

Anti-Corruption. Peter ruthlessly drove home a campaign on a clean-up-politics message. He also used himself and his former Fidez (that’s the party of Orban), links, to make himself more, not less, credible, poacher-turned-gamekeeper, as were many of his team, without any reservations about former ties or record.

Tisza Islands. A federalised party model maxing out its volunteer networks and membership with neighbourhood level teams designed to build community politics and redeploy activists into key target areas from across the country. It also allowed everyone from the hyper-political, to celebrities, to the average joe to participate in activist activities, in or out of house. There were also a lot of third-party(non-party political) organisations around that facilitated the direction TISZA was going that TISZA was intuitively aware of.