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

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0:12Rory Stewart:People thought that it was going to be very difficult to defeat him. He didn't just win, he absolutely trounced him. How do you dismantle what the other lot have done in a way that is legal, effective and quick? On day one, he called for the country's president to resign. This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy. Energy policy rarely stays in Westminster for long, usually arrives with a bill. And from the 1st of April, 75 % of renewables' obligation costs will come off electricity bills and move into general taxation. So if bills are meant to fall from April, why would anyone bother switching?

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1:43Rory Stewart:Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Alistair Campbell. 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 Magia due to fatigue from 16 years of Orbán's government? Given Magia's own politics, are they really out of the populist quagmire? I think that is a little bit harsh on the new incoming Hungarian prime minister.

2:25It is true, Joe, that a lot of people who would not normally vote for Magyar, who essentially is a centre-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 pulled their punches and essentially anybody who was not for Fidesz and Orban wanted Magyar to win.

2:55Rory Stewart:Sorry, I'm interrupting this very naughty of me, but I've got a note from a Hungarian telling me that the correct pronunciation is Peter Magyar. Okay, well Peter Madjar did a pretty amazing job and yes it's true Joe that a lot of people who wouldn't necessarily have voted for a centre-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 was very interesting at 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 kind of spreading like a virus.

3:40And which is why it's so good that Madjar has managed to sort of 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 and he said the same about about putin he said he hoped that the uk rejoin 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 and he had to fight a guy who's been in power for 16 years who has set the 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, you know, vote for this guy if you want a direct line to the White House.

4:37And he won. He didn't just win. He absolutely trounced him.

4:41Rory Stewart: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 Orbán had stacked the cards in a way that it was going to be very, very difficult to beat him. What Orbán 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. So use a genuine majority in parliament to re-rig the constitution and stack the judiciary. used state money to rewire the media.

5:23Rory Stewart:So he didn't need to actually censor independent media, but basically used market mechanisms and enormous subsidies to boost his own media, used government contracts and procurement to create a new class of corrupt oligarchs, to reinforce gerrymander district boundaries. And so with district boundaries gerrymandered, the 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. And such credit, I think, to Magyar for doing this, because, I mean, the guy visited something like 95 % of all the parishes in Hungary during this campaign.

6:05Rory Stewart: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 boot lever, it takes real energy. And if people are going to do this, my goodness, they've got to work harder. because Orban has been such a dominant figure not just in Hungary but as part of this broader political debate around the world I think we underestimate as well the role of civil society that it did keep going there were lots of organizations who did keep trying to call this stuff out as it was happening but listen the campaigning he literally as you say went right around the country again and again and again just trying to get his message through because he couldn't get access to the mainstream media there's maybe a point here Rory to plug the populism series we delayed episode two because of the zelensky interview but it's out for members on friday and this is an extended interview liam byrne and a lot of what magyar has done sorry i'm finding the majar very difficult a lot of what the new hungarian prime minister has done relates to some of the the lessons and the messages that liam byrne is putting in his book why populists are winning and how to beat them, which is what we talk about.

7:30So for example, I saw a lot of the kind of celebration of people on the left was based on the assumption that this was a traditional left-right contest and the guy on the right has lost. No, he stayed very much as a right-of-centre politician. He refused to get pushed into a lot of the kind of so-called woke debates. They kept trying to lay a trap for him to come out on LGBT. They kept trying to sort of suggest that he was going to, you know, be so pro-Ukrainian that your kids would be sent to war as soon as he became prime minister. And he just held very, very firm in the centre. And so I think that's one lesson.

8:12The other thing is, I think that, and this is something that Liam Byrne said, you don't win people over to your side by telling them that they're wrong the whole time. I think the other thing that he did is he created a new framing for why somebody who did support Orban could be persuaded to come back to something more mainstream and sensible. And when we get to part two on Friday, it's very much where we're talking about how to beat populism. And I think that, you know, Magyar is going to be part of that story going forward.

8:43Rory Stewart:There was a question from Douglas, one of our listeners. After democratic success in Hungary, in part due to Fidesz's pro-Russian stance, what do you think UK voters' red lines are? Do you think reform and other European right-wing parties will change their tactics now? Now, some of you keep pointing out Hungary, which is quite a small country. And my goodness, you don't envy Peter Magyar because he is dealing with a country which is in demographic decline. Women are having on average 1.3 children. The Hungarian population has been dropping since 1980, has a serious debt problem, serious problems of productivity, and quite a small population.

9:16Rory Stewart:But why did it matter? And you keep pointing this out, this tiny country matters so much. Well, funny because Orbán became for 16 years, increasingly the global cheerleader of the populist right. He used Hungarian state money, for example, and Fidesz linked banks to fund Marine Le Pen's party. And he put these huge global conferences together. And he had, he thought, this wonderful recipe that he was sharing with Trump's team and MAGA, which was this whole recipe about how you could, while apparently still operating within a pretense of a constitutional market framework, rig the whole system in favor of your populism.

9:55Rory Stewart:I just think, though, that in terms of reform, and this is a point you've made in the past, and I'd be interested in how we develop this. One lesson from this is that Trump is increasingly becoming a liability. Second lesson from this is that if we look at three people that we've discussed a lot recently, Majar Mamdani, the person who's won in New York, and Zelensky, who you've just interviewed. These are people who ran very unconventional campaigns outside the mainstream media. They challenged the sort of Trumpian model not by doing conventional campaigns in the mainstream media. In the case of Madjo, he had to, he couldn't get to the mainstream media.

10:36Rory Stewart:In the case of Mamdani, basically the democratic establishment under Cuomo had stitched the whole thing up and had the money running behind Cuomo. So what they have found is the other side of social media. On the one hand, of course, social media has superpowered people like Trump and the new media environment, but it also gives these chinks of light, these opportunities for uncertain independent candidates to come out of nowhere. We see this maybe with Zach Polanski and the Green Party, getting a kind of name recognition that's never been seen before. Anyway, over to you for the UK implications.

11:09Yeah, look, I think it is interesting how Farage is, without a doubt, trying to distance himself a little bit from Trump. He went in both feet into the start of the Iran war saying we should be alongside him, quickly realized that was a stupid mistake, and is trying to sort of wriggle his way out of that. Vidal, the leader of the AFD in Germany, she has become increasingly quite critical of Trump. I noticed that the weekend that Maloney, right-wing populist in Italy. She was critical of Trump because of his attack on the Pope. Mark Carney, who in a sense partly became prime minister because of the Trump attacks on Canada, which so damaged Pierre Poilievre, the right-wing populist candidate who was so far ahead.

11:54Mark Carney spoke at his party conference at the weekend, and he was not messing about in terms of hitting back at Trump. Sanchez, who you mentioned in the main podcast, he's another one. So Trump's brand is tanking. And if you just think about some of the judgments that Nigel Farage represents, pro-Putin, terrible, pro-Trump, terrible, absolutely obsessed with money. And I think that one of the really big things that damaged Orban so much was this sense of corruption, even though it wasn't that widely reported because the media was controlled. People knew that he had these massive mansions. They knew that his best friend, the gas fitter, had become a billionaire.

12:32and if you project yourself as the man of the people and suddenly you become the corrupt elite you're meant to be fighting against you're going to pay a price i think that farage vital le pen i think they also lost in this election but here's the thing only if the progressive left learned the right lessons from what's gone on here don't assume that this mean the sorts of culture wars that lost the democrats support in the united states no cultural and i think

13:02Rory Stewart:A second lesson is you really need very, very aggressive, active, charismatic campaigning. I mean, just coming back to both Mamdani's skill with social media and Maja's relentless turning up in every village hall over two years, building his base. I mean, if Starmer wants to do well in the next election, Labour wants to do well in the next election, they need to either find a way of Starmer communicating like this, or they need to get rid of Starmer and find someone who can do this. The only way I think of defeating the populace I'm seeing over the last six, seven years is real communication skills, charisma, skill with social media.

13:40Rory Stewart:And all those people that you've talked about have that. And I think what can't happen is kind of gray, steady as you go, boring technocracy, safety first. tempting though that is it didn't really work for Theresa May it's not really working for Starmer it didn't work for Biden you need a very different type of approach final one for me and you've made this point but the reason of course we're talking about the Hungarian election is the really big change is in terms of what it means for Europe Orbán was the big disruptor the big veto holder the big guy who could really disrupt Europe coming together and on Ukraine Peter Maja's first statement, which I just want to read out because I just think it's so startling for the difference.

14:22Rory Stewart:Everyone in Hungary, he said in his speech, knows that Ukraine is a victim of this war and no one should tell them under what conditions they should enter a peace or sign a peace treaty. We cannot tell any country to give up their territory. And this is what the Fidesz politicians said. Then I'd like to ask them, what would you do if Russia attacked Hungary? which hungarian counties would you be willing to give up ukraine should receive security guarantees and territorial guarantees that can be observed and kept ukraine under the budapest memorandum something you discussed with zelensky gave up its nuclear arsenal for guarantees but those guarantees were violated repeatedly by russia very good very strong he's still pretty young his mid-40s.

15:09He's got something of a chequered past and all these accusations related to how he treated his wife, who was also a minister. And he says it's all smears and all that. But I just felt he fought an amazing campaign that met the moment. And I'm sure he came under lots of pressure to be maybe a little bit less centred in the strategy that he pursued. Just on this corruption thing because i mean i'm staggered that the issue of corruption in the united states is not far far far bigger than it is but i think there's always something gary kasparov makes this point there's always something about the far right that they really like putin and they really like money

15:49Rory Stewart:alice we've we've done a lot on hungary i think there's a lot more that we could do because i think it's probably one of the most exciting moments i mean we've been leading up to this for four years, where we actually at the beginning of this show covered Orban's first re-election. So 16 years of Hungarian populist rule finished. But something that we maybe need to get into a little bit more is the challenges that Marshall will now face in not just kind of demographic economic, but as with Poland, one of the challenges is the way in which the whole thing is stacked. And we had a question from Henry who asked, are there lessons from Donald Tusk in Poland for what Marcia would have to do in Hungary to turn the situation around?

16:35Rory Stewart:And to remind people the problem there, that Donald Tusk defeated the Law and Justice Party, which had been in power in Poland since 2015. But he found that the whole institution structure of the Polish state had been rigged in favor of the populists. Marshall's now taking over a situation where the judges have been appointed with a central bank governor, where most of the leading business people are all stacked on Orbán's side. Orbán will be gambling. He can just wait this out, have another go in a couple of years' time and try to make sure that Marshall can make no progress because he can basically paralyze him.

17:07Rory Stewart:And the challenge the polls have faced is how do you dismantle what the other lot have done in a way that is legal, effective and quick? because often what you find is that in Poland you have these very strange situations where Tusk has been criticised for firing judges that the last government, the populist government, was criticised for appointing in the first place. Well, I think this is why the two-thirds supermajority was so important because it means he does have a greater power to make constitutional change. So, for example, on day one, he called for the country's president to resign. Why?

17:46Because the country's president is there basically as a sort of tool of Orbán. So he knows he's going to be oppositional. There are all sorts of new bodies, institutions that Orbán set up that Magyar will want to get rid of. We've talked a lot about the media. Essentially, what you have is a sort of Russian-style propaganda outfit running as the state broadcaster. He'll need to change that. And of course, as you say, now that he stops being the challenger and he becomes the incumbent, it then becomes a little bit harder. That's why I think he should really go for this. The old cliche, hit the ground running.

18:21He should really make some big moves very, very quickly. And Orban, interestingly, yesterday, two interesting things about Orban. First is he threw the towel in very, very quickly. I hope that wasn't to do some deal about not being gone after himself because Maggiore has been very clear through the campaign. People who've looted the country, you know like the best friends who become billionaires and all the rest of it he feels that they had there has to be some sort of accountability but Orban did a very short piece to camera which said to me he's not going away quietly he kept talking about the patriots in the country have got to stick together I suspect we'll see a lot of him on the Liz Truss CPAC circuit he's not going to go away as a voice and he's not going to go away as a thorn in

19:07Rory Stewart:in the new government side so well the other thing that won't go away is that he still has a lot of supporters i mean this was a huge victory for magia but we mustn't forget that there is still a very very big group and this is something you've been discussing in your populism miniseries who genuinely remain very polarized very divided and will be very angry about magia's victory so So there are a lot of Orban supporters out there who buy into the narrative that Europe is rigging things against Orban, that they're facing cultural decline, that they're fighting for the survival of the Hungarian nation against immigration, that they're being dragged into a war in Ukraine by Zelensky and a global elite.

19:55Rory Stewart:And so we're not in a world in which it's easy to sort of do roundtables and compromise and bring people together. he's got to find some way of re-engaging that group with the body politic he won't get them all on board but but just quickly because this was the theme of your mini-series on populism what is the lesson about how one would re-engage what i suppose are the hungarian equivalents to reform voters well this is where i found liam burns analysis so interesting because essentially he's he's done a lot of research a lot of polling a lot of survey work breaking them down into different groups.

20:29And essentially he's saying there are a fairly sizable group of people who are reform minded or reform curious, who are just not going to vote anything but reform. A lot of them may not vote, but they're not going to vote Labour, they're not going to vote Tory, they're not going to vote Lib Dem. He reckons it's about 40 % that Labour could get back. And partly it's this thing about respect. It's this thing about understanding why they're so pissed off with the main parties, why they feel their lives have not got better. But you have to give them the arguments for that and the policies for that.

21:03And you have to, back to your point about communication and being out there the whole time, you have to make them feel that you get their lives and you want to be part of making their lives better. And then I think the other thing that he was really strong on is that, you know, we've got our three Ps, populism, polarization, post-truth. And he's got his three A's that he says are absolutely fundamental to the way that populists operate. Appeasement, autocracy, and avarice. Now, appeasement basically means, and this is what Orban did brilliantly for four terms, even the opposition felt we're never going to beat this guy.

21:38He's got too much control. So you give in or you give up.

21:41Rory Stewart:And that's what Trump's gambling on in the global system, isn't it? Totally. In the end, everybody will appease Trump and we'll just suck up whatever America does. And then autocracy is the system that you build around yourself. But he says that the third one, which is so important, I'm really glad that the Philip Rykoff review is underway. I think the government needs to go even further in cleaning up the financing of our politics, because the third A is avarice. And there is something very, very strange. I mean, why aren't people appalled at the money that Trump and his family are making being in power?

22:14Why has it taken the Hungarians 16 years to realize that this is just utterly sickening? And yet when you see Nigel Farage and some of his money-making schemes, the one that I nearly fooled you on April 4, where his Bitcoin thing with Kwasi Kwarteng, all the money that they make from GB News. One of the other interesting things that Liam Byrne has analysed is that there's this huge, over£150 million worth of media infrastructure that is essentially built there to help the populist far right. We've just got to be far better, the progressive left in particular, but centrist politics, and I would argue the Tories who are centre right as well, far better at exposing this.

22:58so listen i think there's a lot in liam's book but there's also and the series but there's also a lot in what magia has done that i think parties of the left can learn from not just parties of

23:09Rory Stewart:the right we had a question from robert from york um what did you make of british crypto billionaire bendello's recent four million pound donations reform it's apparently made before the government's cap on donations to political parties by british citizens living abroad and was brought in but he's actually moving back to the uk so he'd be able to donate more in the future i mean Just before you get onto that, it is interesting. Why on earth are all these rich people giving so much reform? And given that there will be a lot of business people who won't believe that reform will be good for the British economy, a lot of more conventional British people who traditionally would have given money to Labour or the Conservatives, believing that a little bit more predictability, a little bit more reason, and maybe even a little bit more of getting close to the European Union will be good for their businesses.

23:56Rory Stewart:why are they staying away and why are all these other guys coming in is it that a lot of them made their money in crypto and that makes them in a sense naturally quite anarchistic anti-status quo anti-elite and of course crypto money is made so quickly and has so little to do with normal predictable functioning economies that maybe that is the sweet spot for a lot of these people on the populace far right totally i think you've answered your own question they don't want any sort of government oversight, not just of crypto, but of anything that they do to make money. You know, we're back to my argument about the sovereign individual, we're back to why Musk projects himself as a believer of free speech.

24:38What he means is that he should be free to do whatever he wants to make more and more money and assimilate more and more power. I just think we've got to wake up to this, that the sorts of, you know, and I don't know these people individually, they may be very, very nice, they may be very nice to their mums and very nice to their dogs and cats. But, you know, I'm instinctively very suspicious of somebody who lives in Thailand and makes his money in crypto and gives loads of money to Nigel Farage. I'm very suspicious of this guy who comes back being portrayed by Richard Tyson, Nigel Farage and the Daily Telegraph as a great patriot because he's coming back to put his money into reform.