For years, Victor Orban’s Hungary has been held up – by admirers and critics alike – as proof that the populist Right, once entrenched, is almost impossible to dislodge. A self-described “illiberal state,” tight media control, constitutional engineering, and a politics built on division and grievance all seemed to point in one direction: permanence. And yet – politics has a habit of reminding us that nothing is permanent.
Yesterday’s election result in Hungary has sent a jolt through that assumption. After more than a decade and a half dominating Hungarian politics, Orban’s grip has been broke by a broad, pro-European opposition. It wasn’t inevitable. It wasn’t easy. But it was possible.
For liberals and democrats here in the UK that matters. Because too often we hear a weary fatalism: that once populists take hold, the game is up; that institutions bend and never recover; that voters, once captured by grievance politics, don’t return. Hungary suggests otherwise.
Here are five takeaways we should take seriously.
- Unity beats purity. Hungary’s opposition didn’t win by fragmenting into ideological silos. It came together-liberals, social democrats, greens, conservatives who believe in democracy-around a shared goal: restoring democratic norms. In the UK we too often default to internal squabbles. Hungary shows that when the stakes are high, cooperation across traditions isn’t a betrayal of values-it’s how you defend them.
- Democracy still matters to voters. Orban’s project relied on the assumption that voters either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care about the erosion of democratic checks and balances. But, over time, many did. People care about fairness. They care about whether the system works for them. They may not always use the language of ‘liberal democracy,’ but they recognise when something isn’t right.
- High turnout changes everything. One of the most striking features of the Hungarian result was turnout. When more voters engage, the electorate becomes broader, less polarised, and less easily captured by a narrow base. If liberals and democrats want to win, we shouldn’t just persuade-we should mobilise. Apathy is the populist Right’s quiet ally.
- The populist Right is not invincible. Orban cultivated an image of inevitability. That’s a core part of populist strategy: to appear unstoppable, to sap the opposition’s confidence before a vote is even cast. Hungary punctures that myth. However dominant a movement may seem, it is still subject to the same basic truth: if enough people vote against it, it can be removed.
- Offer hope, not just opposition. Crucially, Hungary’s opposition, led by the new PM-elect Peter Magyar, didn’t just say “not Orban.” It offered a different direction-pro European, outward-looking, and rooted in democratic renewal. Here in the UK, liberals must do the same. Critiquing the populist Right is necessary, but not sufficient. People need something to vote for.
None of this is to pretend that the road ahead in Hungary will be easy. Resetting and rebuilding institutions, restoring trust, and repairing the political culture will take time.
But the lesson is clear: democracy can fight back and win. And for those of us who believe in open, liberal, pluralist societies, that should give us not just comfort – but renewed determination.
How Left do you have to be to be ‘purged’ from the Left?
Reports that allies of Jeremy Corbyn on the ruling body of his new political venture-‘Your Party’-have voted to purge elements of “the Left” are as ironic as they are revealing. Because it begs an obvious question: just how Left do you have to be to be expelled from a party explicitly founded as an alternative to Labour from the Left?
This is the same Corbyn who, during his years leading the Labour Party, repeatedly claimed he couldn’t act decisively against factionalism, alleged extremism, or bad behaviour within his own ranks. We were told his hands were tied. If Corbyn can purge internal opponents in a small, fledgling party, why was that resolve apparently absent when he led a major political party? It suggests the problem was never power – it was judgement.
A Liberal lion we still miss
Five years on (yesterday) from the death of Shirley Williams, we remember a giant of British politics – trailblazer, Secretary of Stats, SDP co-founder, and a driving force behind today’s Liberal Democrats.
She showed that courage, principle and decency can reshape politics.
We need that spirit now more than ever.
* Mathew Hulbert is a former Councillor, is a regular commentator on TV and Radio, and is Co-Host of the Political Frenemies podcast.
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5 Comments
“Unity beats purity. Hungary’s opposition didn’t win by fragmenting into ideological silos. It came together-liberals, social democrats, greens, conservatives who believe in democracy-around a shared goal: restoring democratic norms. In the UK we too often default to internal squabbles. Hungary shows that when the stakes are high, cooperation across traditions isn’t a betrayal of values-it’s how you defend them.”
Oh, if only a broad alliance of democrats been able to prevent the pushing through of the incoherent and unclarified Brexit process and Johnson government in 2019 by such a coalition.
Yet, still on here, commentators try to divide the liberal-left from both economic liberals and the the economic right (one one hand) and the socially conservative left and centre (on the other) using words like ‘regressive’ and the ‘pro-system’ vs ‘anti-system’ duality proposed the other day by Chris Bowers…
One lesson from Orban’s defeat, and his conceding the election early when just a fraction of the vote had been counted, is that much of the commentary around the health of democracy in Hungary in recent years has been hyperbole. Yes, his changes to the voting system had resulted in his party winning 2/3rd of the seats on just 52% of the vote, but worth remembering that Labour won almost 2/3rds of the seats in 2024 on just 32% of the vote.
So Orban has been ejected from power with the opposition winning 2/3rds of the seats on 52% of the vote. Do we think they will change the electoral system to make is more representative?
The overwhelming defeat of the Orban government is certainly a welcome step, and it is particularly useful for supporters of the EU and of Ukraine. We should however note that Peter Magyar’s new party, with its supermajority of 136 seats in the Hangarian National Assembly, is another party that is also avowedly of the populist right, albeit one that is pro-European, pro-democratic and pro- Ukrainian. Centrist voters may have switched to them in order to reject Orban, but Magyar is certainly not going to adopt centre-left policies. The votes for the most liberal party, the Democrats, fell catastrophically, failing to reach the 5% threshold required for representation, so forfeiting the 15 seats they had previously held in the National Assembly.
Rif Winfield: I think, if we’re lucky, we end up with something that’s more like Boris Johnson’s tenure as London Mayor (maybe with large elements of, say, the historic and current Bavarian CSU platform thrown in), than the Trump-Putin pseudo-Christian-nationalist machine we’ve had in Hungary for 16 years.
From the point of democratic politics and European stability, that would be a gain. If that’s what we do get.
I can see though, that from the point of view of those who want to push the Overton window in Hungary towards more economic-left or personal-rights-based liberalisms, its thin gruel.
Its a democratic reassertion, not a social and cultural revolution.
@ Matthew Hulbert,
“How Left do you have to be to be ‘purged’ from the Left?”
If you’re asking this question you’re probably missing the point. It isn’t a question of left and right. All democratic socialist parties have rules to the effect that members shouldn’t belong to other political groupings and esecially to those organisations that operate as so-called democratic centralist parties.
“Democratic centralism” inevitably means that members need to agree with every dot and comma of directives issued by a central committee. The SWP, which is probably causing most problems in YP at the moment, were formed because, as the International Socialists as they were once known, they held a slightly different view of the USSR to other Trotskyist groups.
So it’s fair enough that Corbyn doesn’t want this degree of rigidity in YP.
Having said this, his handling of the formation of a new party has been just about as inept as it has been possible to be! He should have had YP , or whatever a better name might have been, up and running well before the last election. He would have had a free hand with the troublesome Zarah Sultana safely out of the way in the Labour Party!
YP has missed the boat. The support JC and the new party could have had has largely gone to the Greens.