Has Hungary Shown Britain How to Beat Farage? (Question Time)

**Rory Stewart** (0:07)
Welcome to The Rest Is Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

**Alastair Campbell** (0:11)
And with me, Alastair Campbell.

**Rory Stewart** (0:12)
Lots of questions. We're going to do quite a lot on Hungary, where there's been an incredible result. We'll also look at the local elections coming in Britain, Scottish elections, and Welsh elections, and much more. But Alastair, I wanted to start with a question from Joe. Is it not possible that the Hungarian people have just pinched their noses to vote for Magyar due to fatigue from 16 years of Orban's government?
Given Maia's own politics, are they really out of the populist quagmire?

**Alastair Campbell** (0:44)
I think that is a little bit harsh on the new incoming Hungarian prime minister.
It is true, Joe, that a lot of people who would not normally vote for Magyar, who essentially is a center-right politician, did so because they just wanted to get rid of Orban. No doubt about that at all, including people considerably well to the left of him. Quite a few people who might have stood didn't. Some of the parties pull their punches, and essentially anybody who was not for Fidesz and Orban, wanted Magyar to win.

**Rory Stewart** (1:19)
Sorry, I'm interrupting this very naughty of me, but I've got an note from a Hungarian telling me that the correct pronunciation is Peter Magyar.

**Alastair Campbell** (1:28)
Okay. Well, Peter Magyar did a pretty amazing job. Yes, it's true, Joe, the lot of people who wouldn't necessarily have voted for a center-right politician decided to do so because the big driving goal of the election for so many people was just to get rid of Orban.
Are they out of the populist quagmire? Well, the answer to that is hopefully.
I thought it's very interesting in his press conference. Because Orban is much more than the Prime Minister of Hungary, he's this big global figure, part of the populist, nationalist, authoritarian politics that is spreading like a virus, which is why it's so good that Magyar has managed to put a stop to him. But I thought his press conference, he covered an awful lot of ground. He was definitely being more reasonable towards Europe. He was being pro-Ukrainian, saying Ukraine has to be able to sort out its own future. He said if Trump phoned him, he'd take the call, but he wasn't looking for it. He said the same about Putin. He said he hoped that the UK rejoined the European Union, tick in my book. Let's just not underestimate this.
In any election, you have to fight what's in front of you. He had to fight a guy who's been in power for 16 years, who has set the institutions of the state basically as extensions of his own political project, with a massive control of the media, Russian money pouring in, Trump sending Vance and Rubio to back him up, Trump himself saying on the day, vote for this guy if you want a direct line to the White House, and he won. He didn't just win, he absolutely trounced him.

**Rory Stewart** (3:06)
It's an incredible day, isn't it? It's a really incredible day because in many ways, many people who knew Hungary well thought that Orban had stacked the cards in a way that it was going to be very, very difficult to beat him. What Orban essentially had done over 16 years is demonstrate, or it felt like he could demonstrate that you could create the beginnings of a proper authoritarian non-democratic state without doing any of the formal things that you would expect an authoritarian government to do. Use a genuine majority in Parliament to re-rig the Constitution and stack the judiciary. Use state money to rewire the media. He didn't need to actually censor independent media, but basically use market mechanisms and enormous subsidies to boost his own media. Use government contracts and procurement to create a new class of corrupt oligarchs to reinforce gerrymandered district boundaries.
With district boundaries gerrymandered, courts captured, the media captured, and all the stuff you're talking about, real interference, people thought that it was going to be very difficult to defeat him.
Such credit, I think, to Magyar for doing this. The guy visited something like 95 percent of all the parish hits in Hungary during this campaign. So he managed to see 327 towns, 517 times, visited 161 parishes out of 174, often managed to visit six or even nine towns in one day. So I think it's a real inspiration that absolutely populists can be beaten. But I think the second point is, it's not inevitable. It takes real bootleaf, it takes real energy. And if people are going to do this, my goodness, they got to work hard.