An End to Orbanism?

Orban's gone, but so has Orbanism? Sunday's election results must be beyond Péter Magyar's wildest dreams. 138 seats, well over the two-thirds majority required to make sweeping changes to Hungary's constitution does, on paper, give the incoming Prime Minister the tools he needs to address the damage wrought by Orban. The crony appointments to the judiciary, to the media regulators, to the ministries, for 16 years these have been nothing but so many troughs for his allies. The end of his premiership and the impressive electoral performance means, for Magyar, that expectations will be sky high. Is he in a position to reverse Orbanism and clear out the state apparatus? Does he have the trousers to back up what his mouth says?

Unfortunately, even as Hungarians are dancing in the streets and observers abroad cheer on Orban's downfall, the warning lights have long been flashing. If anything, Magyar is more anti-immigration than Orban, having roundly criticised him for the introduction of a guest workers' scheme. Much has also been made of Magyar not being pro-Russian, what with the chants of 'Russians Go Home' echoing as much around Western social media as the streets of Budapest. But this does not necessarily mean he's supportive of Ukraine's war effort. He has, for example, gone on the record to say he supports Hungary's opt out from contributing to the EU's loan to Kyiv, albeit using more emollient tones than Orban's. Likewise he hopes to take advantage of the cheap oil deal Hungary has with Russia, though who knows where that is now Moscow has declared them an "unfriendly country". Nevertheless, Magyar is keen on receiving the €17bn in frozen EU funding, so there are costs to continuity Orbanism.

Apart from this, there are other problems too. The Tisza Party was a down-and-out centrist outfit before Magyar joined, following his exile from the Orbanist state apparat. And he has built it up as a formation distinctly of the centre right, despite its becoming the repository of democratic aspirations across Hungarian society. And how effective could such a figure prove to be in resetting government, untangling institutional corruption, and addressing the fusion of state and oligarchical interests? Imagine if Rishi Sunak were to lead a popular upsurge against a Nigel Farage Reform government. The analogy isn't a million miles away. I'm not in the business of forecasting doom before Magyar has attempted anything, but given his background, his political programme, and the fact unpicking the oligarchy too much could have far reaching progressive consequences for Hungarian politics, which might include a revival of independent working class politics in the long run, there are limits to how far he's going to go. And that could mean a return to Orban or another right wing authoritarian after the next election. The United States and the failure of the Democrats to follow through after the January 2021 putsch debacle serves as a warning.

Outside of Hungary, however, the significance of Orban's loss is obvious. For the United States and Russia, for Trump and for Putin, Orban was a natural ally, a seemingly successful experiment in open class rule, of not bothering to drape the obscenity of the naked oligarchy in anything but a few rags of scapegoating and welfare bribes. That has not only failed, but the record turn out for a Hungarian election shows that even the limited liberalism of an illiberal democracy can be seized upon to lever their sort out of office, if not out of power. Putin is more secure thanks to his extensive domestic security apparatus, but Trump is not. The efforts to try and rig the mid-terms through the ill-fated re-districting efforts and ballot conditionalities shows the forces he coheres are still concerned that there's enough life in American constitutionalism to bring them down. Magyar's victory then has a double edge. His failure to undo the last 16 years could lead to a retread of precisely what's just been cancelled, but simultaneously it shows that no authoritarian leader can indefinitely manage a restricted democracy to their benefit.

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