By Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Iceland
When the results of the Hungarian parliamentary elections on 12 April 2026 were announced, I was reminded of a remark Margaret Thatcher made in late 2002, at a dinner in Hampshire. She was asked what she considered her greatest achievement. She replied: ‘Tony Blair!’ Eleven years of self-confident and successful Thatcherism, followed by seven years of John Major’s less combative Thatcherism, had forced the Labour opposition to join the new mainstream set in motion by Thatcher. In 1997, when Labour’s Tony Blair replaced Major, their similarities were much more striking than their differences. This also seems to be the case now in Hungary. The victory of opposition leader Péter Magyar is, of course, the defeat of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, but it is not a defeat of Orbán’s positions: Magyar and Orbán are both conservatives and nationalists. The Hungarian elections and Orbán’s acceptance of the results also demonstrate the implausibility of the claim made by many left-wing commentators that Orbán was some kind of fascist. During his sixteen years in office, Hungary remained a democracy.
Nationalism, Good and Bad
Indeed, Magyar may be more conservative and nationalist than Orbán in one respect. He is not a friend of Russia’s Putin. Hungarian voters resoundingly rejected any alignment with the authoritarian Russian regime, which has waged war on Ukraine for more than four years. It should be emphasised that this is a war between two kinds of nationalism, the aggressive, expansionist nationalism of Russia and the peaceful, non-assertive nationalism of Ukraine, which is essentially an affirmation of her identity. The Ukrainians want to be Ukrainians, not Russians. True conservatives should respect the Ukrainian will to be an autonomous nation, to form an independent state, and to protect her traditions, language, and literature, her memories and aspirations. True nationalists should extend to others what they demand for themselves: national self-determination. A real nation is based on choice, not on force. She is, as Ernest Renan said, a daily plebiscite.
A Nation of Free Men
Hopefully, Magyar’s nationalism will be of the benign kind, the expression of the Hungarians’ will to be a nation among nations, with minimal surrender of sovereignty to the faceless bureaucrats in Brussels. When I debated the Icelandic leftists in the 1970s, I often ended my speeches with an Icelandic translation of the ringing words by the Hungarian national poet Sándor Petöfi:
Arise Magyar, your country calls!
Now or never, our time compels!
Shall we be slaves? Shall we be free?
These are the questions. Answer me!
The Hungarians deserve to be a nation of free men, not slaves. Moreover, Magyar (who happily bears the same name as his nation) strongly supports another pillar of civil society, the family, which is not only a much more efficient consumption unit than an individual, but also a stabiliser, extending our time horizon. Lord Keynes justified short-term measures by noting that, in the long run, we are all dead. Yes, but the children live on. Magyar rightly observes that Hungary, and other European countries, risk depopulation, which will not be solved by mass immigration from countries with traditions of religious extremism, intolerance and misogyny, but rather by encouraging Hungarian families to have more children.
"If it is serious about fighting cronyism, the EU could cut its spending"
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Subsidies Corrupt
The main reason for Orbán’s defeat was voter fatigue, and a healthy suspicion by the common man of too much power held by too few for too long. In the last sixteen years, with a two-thirds majority in parliament, the state and the party seemed to merge into one, as happened in the Scandinavian countries during the Social Democrats’ dominance after the Second World War.
In press reports before the elections, much was made of the waste and corruption in Hungary linked to EU subsidies, and of the threat from Brussels of withholding EU funds if Hungary was not compliant with EU directives. But the two lessons to be learned from this are that subsidies tend to corrupt the recipients and that there should be no EU funds given to or withheld from the member states.
Originally published by The Conservative
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