Orbán Ousted: Is The Tide Turning Against Far-Right Populism?

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**Alastair Campbell** (3:07)
Hi there, welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell. Rawl is still away. He's back in action tomorrow, but I felt we couldn't really let the events of the last 24 hours pass without reflecting on just how big a moment this is, the end of Viktor Orbán's rule of Hungary. 16 years, four terms, enough time to create what many people have called a Mafia state, and where Orbán had become so much more than the leader of a country of fewer than 10 million people.
He had become a symbol of far-right, kleptocratic authoritarian nationalism, which, because Donald Trump is back in the White House pursuing much the same agenda and often citing Orbán as an inspiration, many had assumed it was the winning formula for modern politics and modern campaigns. Orbán has lost, and he's lost big. So big that he had no option but to throw in the towel long before all the votes were even counted.
But he's not the only loser. Trump lost, Vladimir Putin lost, Milei, Maloney, Netanyahu, plenty of fellow right-wing leaders broke that basic rule of not interfering in other countries' elections to say vote Orbán. And they lost too, because in so doing, they put themselves and their politics on the ballot alongside him. And that's why this election is not just about Hungary, which is a landlocked country that could fit inside Indiana, a single American state. It's seven times smaller than Texas and 180 times smaller than Russia. This is about what it says about what happens when the politics and policies of far-right nationalism are actually exposed to real challenge and real scrutiny. And it shows they can be beaten. Now, Trump went further than most. He sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio to campaign for Orbán. And in the vital final week, he sent Vice President JD Vance, who seems to have been as effective at driving up the Orbán vote as he was at leading the talks in Islamabad to end the war with Iran. That guy is turning out to be quite a loser. On election day itself, Trump and his family and friends, who like Orbán's friends and family, are getting very rich on the back of their guy being in power, posted relentlessly on social media. Urging Hungarians to vote Orbán to have a direct line to the White House. And guess what? The Hungarians' queue from dawn voted in record numbers, 80% turnout, to say, no thank you, Trump, no thank you, Musk, no thank you, Mr Vance. Take your interference elsewhere. What was it President Zelensky said in our interview that was out earlier this week? I'm not sure sending JD is a good idea for Orbán. Well, how right he was. As for Putin, he sent in Money to Burn and Agents Galore. Where once the Kremlin enemy to be plastered all over Orbán's election posters was George Soros, now it was President Zelensky and President Ursula von der Leyen. Anyone in Budapest in recent weeks would have thought that they, not Orbán and Magyar, were the candidates. And guess what? It seems a lot of Hungarians seem to think that Ukraine is a country worth backing, Russia is a country worth fighting against, and the EU a body worth being part of and worth supporting. So the money spent on bribing voters has been wasted. The win that was so big that the Kremlin's planned operation to claim that Magyar had stolen votes, get this, they were even going to announce the setting up of a democracy protection unit was not even fully activated. As in Moldova, where they launched a similar operation against Maesandu, the Russians head home defeated. For now, they will keep going. So Trump loses, Putin loses, Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, Alice Vidal and the AFD. They lose because the playbook they thought would see them coast to power, it looks a lot less solid than it once was. Closeness to Trump, fondness for Putin, love of money and using politics to get rich, all now exposed as real handicaps, not assets. And it's about time their opponents understood they are there to be taken apart with greater confidence than thus far shown. What Magyar has shown is that with the right strategy, with confidence and conviction, these people can not just be beaten, they can be thrashed. Now don't get me wrong, Peter Magyar is a very unlikely hero for anyone on the progressive left of politics. He himself is a former leading light in Orbán's Fidesz party. He is well to the right of some of the European political figures who have been rejoicing at his win. But he matched the strategy to the needs of the time and he deserves all the plaudits coming his way for that. Now the hard part begins, though the scale of the win means he should be able to undo most of Orbán's egregious changes.