While we were sleeping

By Ann Higgins

Hungary partied last Sunday night celebrating what we in the UK could only dream of: improving relations with the EU from within, not without. After a record turnout of over 79%, their new leader, President of the Tisza Party (Respect and Freedom) Péter Magyar, looks set not just to win the election, but to achieve the 2/3 majority of seats (133) needed to overturn the large number of authoritarian laws enacted over the last few years by now former prime minister Victor Orbán in order to increase and cement his power by using methods much admired and indeed copied by Trump and other wannabe despots.

But who is Péter Magyar? Before he won this election I have to admit that my knowledge of him was rather sketchy but even I knew that he had been an ally of Orbán’s for many years and indeed a member of his Fidesz government for much of that time. So I was very surprised to read an article about the outcome accusing the Hungarian people of allowing themselves to be conned into voting for a nobody who knew nothing about government and was destined to be a pawn of the EU. While that was clearly a rather slanted piece it set me to wondering what we do know about him, what his main policies are, and also what reactions the trouncing of his predecessor has caused, especially among those who were invested highly in Orbán’s success.

Firstly, a potted history. Born in 1981 into a political family, his great uncle Ferenc Mádl having been President of Hungary from 2000 to 2005, after studying law both in Budapest and Berlin (through the Erasmus scheme) and working in international and corporate law, in 2006 he joined the then opposition party Fidesz. After it took power in 2010, he was appointed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in 2011 became part of the permanent representation of Hungary at the EU. In 2015 he moved to a seat in the Prime Minister’s Office and soon moved into banking, becoming CEO of the student loan centre in 2019. So not so much of a newcomer to politics.

What brought about his rift with Orbán and his extraordinary rise to his present position? As he now tells it, he was becoming increasingly disenchanted with the growing corruption and autocracy in the Orbán government. This came to a head when in February 2024 it became known that in April 2023 the then Hungarian President, Katalin Novák, had pardoned the deputy manager of a children’s home who had coerced children into covering up the abuse by his superior. Magyar’s wife, Judit Varga, then the Minster of Justice, had countersigned the pardon and in February 2024 she was forced to resign, the couple having already separated and divorced in 2023. Despite attempts to discredit him, Magyar embarked upon an increasingly popular series of broadcasts, rallies and demonstrations. Reviving the almost defunct Tisza Party, he quickly grew his base and was elected to the European Parliament in 2024 as one of seven Tisza Party MEPs. His campaign focussed on marches linked to important days and events in the Hungarian calendar demanding government accountability, media freedom, and an end to partisanship.

Despite (or in the case of JD Vance perhaps because of) the best efforts of Orbán and his supporters, the campaign was a spectacular success. As perhaps surprisingly reported by the Daily Mail, having said that he wouldn’t tell the Hungarian people how to vote, Vance went on immediately to tell them “We’ve got to get Viktor Orbán re-elected as prime minister of Hungary, don’t we?” He then claimed Orbán was “a man who has done more than any leader in Europe to bring about a successful resolution to the war between Russia and Ukraine.” This came after a live broadcast by Donald Trump himself praising Orbán and his anti-immigrant policies. Later Vance would go on to castigate the EU for trying to influence the election.

As Professor Heather Cox Richardson points out in her Substack column Letters from an American dated 13 April, the Trump regime owes a great deal to Orbán going right back to Trump’s first term:

“Increasingly, Orbán used the power of the state to concentrate wealth among his cronies, and he reworked the country’s judicial system and civil service system to stack it with his loyalists. By 2026, Hungary still had elections, but state control of the media and the apparatus of voting made it very difficult for Orbán’s opponents to take power.

“That model proved irresistible for right-wing leaders in the U.S. who courted radical white evangelicals and who recognized that their ideology was unpopular enough that the only way to make it the law of the land was to impose it through the power of the state. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis, who took office in 2019, followed Orbán’s model right down to the laws prohibiting discussion of LGBTQ+ issues and DeSantis’s attempt to strip Disney of its governance structure when it refused to adhere to the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law.

“Orbán’s idea that the power of the state must be used to overturn democracy in order to enable a small group of leaders to restore virtue to a nation inspired the far-right figures that took charge of the Republican Party under Trump. As Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts put it: ‘Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.’

“Calling for ‘institutionalizing Trumpism’, Roberts pulled together dozens of right-wing institutions behind the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 to create a blueprint for a second Trump term that uses the power of the government to impose right-wing religious values on the U.S. In his foreword for a 2024 book by Roberts, then-senator and vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance made it clear he saw himself and Roberts as working together to create ‘a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics’.

“Since taking power, Trump and Vance have followed Orbán’s model both at home and internationally. Instead of working with our traditional allies, they have attacked Europe and aligned the U.S. with Hungary and Russia.”

As is only now emerging, it turns out that not only was the US supporting Orbán, but Orbán was funding the US organisation CPAC (aka Conservative Political Action Conference) at which in 2025 not just Trump but Vance, Musk, Bondi and Bannon were speakers along with our own Liz Truss and Nigel Farage. Magyar has already pledged to stop this funding immediately but unfortunately even he won’t be able to stop this conference taking place in the UK this year. He has also said that he will introduce laws to prevent PMs serving more than two terms which would effectively stop Orbán from standing again.

Not altogether surprisingly, the Democrats in the US have largely welcomed the change in government, some seeing it as a good omen for the US November mid-term elections. Even some Republicans seem to see it in positive terms, one Republic Senator viewing it as a repudiation of Vladimir Putin by the Hungarian people. On the other hand, Elon Musk described it as a takeover of Hungary by the Soros organisation while Trump has been surprisingly silent on this, if on very little else.

Meanwhile, Keir Starmer and many EU leaders sent messages of congratulations. There is hope within the EU and Hungary that it will be possible to reach agreement on such issues as anti-corruption, which in turn will allow the frozen funds earmarked for Hungary to be released. While not a fan of everything that comes out of Brussels, Magyar has already spoken about moving gradually towards the euro and it’s unlikely that he will continue Orbán’s hostility to financial help for Ukraine and/or EU sanctions on Russia. How long this process takes and with what concessions on both sides remains to be seen, of course, but a willingness by the EU to grant concessions to this new Hungarian government may give us an inkling about how flexible they might be should the UK ever apply formally to rejoin, as I’m sure most of you reading this hope that it will.