Viktor Orbán’s defeat exposes ReformUK’s fragile benchmark
Yesterday
Right-Wing Watch
Left Foot Forward
Beyond Hungary, the result may point to something broader. Across Europe, parts of the populist right appear to be encountering limits and have, dare we say it, peaked.
Right-Wing Watch
Left Foot Forward
Beyond Hungary, the result may point to something broader. Across Europe, parts of the populist right appear to be encountering limits and have, dare we say it, peaked.
Viktor Orbán is out. Vladimir Putin’s EU ally, who spent 16 years recasting Hungary as a model of “illiberal democracy,” has been decisively shown the door. Some 3.3 million Hungarians opted for Peter Magyar and his Tisza Party, to “dismantle the Orbán system.”
The result raises an awkward question for ultraconservative Orbán admirers in high places around the world, and none more so than Reform UK: what happens when your model collapses and with it, your supposed open highway to power?
MAGA spared no blushes
The timing, it must be said, was exquisite. JD Vance touched down in Budapest to give Orbán his blessing, only to watch voters withdraw theirs – in their droves.
And the anti-MAGA commentariat spared no blushes. “JD Vance is on a historic roll,” mocked former prosecutor and long-term Democrat Ron Filipkowski, cataloguing the vice president’s recent foreign policy blunders.
But the mockery, however deserved, risks understating the significance of what has happened in the small Central European nation, the unravelling of a political project that has spent years insisting it represents the future.
Since 2010, Viktor Orbán cultivated Hungary as a showcase for “illiberal democracy,” a “Christian nationalism” promoted as an alternative to Western liberal democracy. It was a rule focused on centralised power, hostility to independent institutions, cultural conservatism, and relentless emphasis on sovereignty and anti-immigration politics, with razor-wire fences erected at borders.
But as well as domestic governance, it was an export strategy. Through state-aligned media, think tanks, and conferences, Orbán’s Hungary was marketed across the US and Europe, including the UK, as proof that liberal democracy could be hollowed out without electoral cost.
And the model was eagerly imported wherever possible, admired and imitated by a transnational network that included figures like Donald Trump, JD Vance and Reform UK.
That model has now been not just challenged, but repudiated. The scale of Orbán’s defeat to Péter Magyar of the Tisza Party matters. So do the scenes that followed, tens of thousands on the streets of Budapest chanting “Europe! Europe! Europe!,” a direct rebuke to the insular nationalism that defined Orbán’s rule.
This was not simply a change of government. It was a collective rejection of the politics Orbán spent 16 years entrenching at home and abroad. It’s early days and of course, Magyar is a right-wing conservative, but first signs – the move towards Europe and the determination to address corruption – are promising.
Orbán and the British right
From Liz Truss being mocked for claiming “there is no longer free speech in the UK” at a right-wing conference in Hungary in 2025, overlooking Orbán’s well-known crackdown on press freedom, to Miriam Cates praising him as “one of the most important figures in the patriotic conservative movement” and, as recently as March, hosting him for an exclusive GB News interview, many right-wing UK politicians have openly admired Orbán.
This admiration has not been merely rhetorical, it has helped shape a broader political strategy. From calls for mass deportations to deep scepticism of international institutions, especially the EU, Reform-style politics has drawn heavily on Orbán’s Hungary as proof that a confrontational, anti-liberal agenda can evolve from insurgency into durable governance.
Nigel Farage and his allies have long held up Orbán as a benchmark. Farage described him as “the strongest leader in Europe” in 2018, and later as “the future of Europe” for his unapologetic defence of the nation-state against liberal consensus.
Despite Hungary having been ranked as the most corrupt country in the EU, with high levels of poverty, Reform figures have continued to express admiration for his leadership. At a 2025 political festival in Hungary, the party’s head of policy, James Orr, described Orbán’s model as a “counterexample” to what he sees as Britain’s ideological drift away from national pride and heritage.
MattGPT and the MCC
In a recent interview with Hungary Today, Reform’s defeated Gorton and Denton candidate and GB News presenter Matthew Goodwin, praised Hungary as a rare state committed to sovereignty and national identity. Goodwin, also known as ‘MattGPT’ after claims he relied on AI to write his latest book, has extensive links to institutions associated with Orbán.
As DeSmog reports, he has spoken at multiple events hosted by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a state-funded private college chaired by Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán. MCC has been described as a propaganda outfit for Orbán’s views on everything from gender to race. It has received over $1.3 billion in public funding and regularly convenes high-profile international conferences.
MCC also has a 10% stake in MOL, Hungary’s national oil company. Just days before the election, MOL announced it would pay MCC a £57 million dividend ahead of schedule, potentially giving it resources to challenge Magyar’s government. However, new reports indicate that Magyar plans to force a delay in the payout until later this year, while his government explores ways to strip MCC of its shares. He has pledged to “end the practice of political network-building with public funds” by cutting off state resources to Orbán’s affiliates.
Meanwhile in Britain, as of early 2026, MCC has been significantly bankrolling the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation (RSLF) in London, named after the controversial right-wing British philosopher, Roger Scruton. A year before he died in 2020, Scruton was awarded the Order of Merit of Hungary by Orbán in London. The following year, the RSLF was born. In fact, Orbán’s seeming love affair with Scruton, who described Islamophobia as a “propaganda word” invented by the Muslim Brotherhood to “stop discussion of a major issue,” and referred to Hungarian Muslims as “huge tribes,” can be seen through the nine cafes named after the philosopher in Hungary.
A Good Law project report suggests that over 90% of the RSLF’s funding has come from the Russian-oil-backed MCC since 2023. Cambridge theology academic and now Reform UK’s Head of Policy James Orr is a trustee/director of the RSLF. As is Spectator editor and former Tory minister Michael Gove.
Goodwin also previously served as an MCC visiting fellow, teaching and delivering public lectures in Hungary. The Good Law Project noted in February that the role netted Goodwin between €5,000 and €10,000 a month, though Reform disputes this figure. He most recently delivered a keynote speech at an MCC event in Budapest in March 2026 titled “Reclaiming the West.”
In his first press conference following his landslide win, Peter Magyar announced the state would no longer finance institutions such as MCC. He went further, suggesting it may have been a criminal offence for Orbán to have funded MCC with public money, and that he intends to investigate.
What this might mean for ‘MattGPT’ and other figures on the right associated with the institution is far from clear, but the implications could be significant if those claims gain traction beyond Hungary. As Jolyon Maugham, executive director of the Good Law Project, put it:
“If, as Hungary’s new prime minister is suggesting, this funding is criminal, the likes of Matt Goodwin are going to be combing through our proceeds of crime legislation.”
Tim Picton, senior advocacy adviser for Spotlight on Corruption, said the case raises broader concerns about how foreign state-linked funding intersects with British politics:
“MCC has solid links to prominent political figures in the UK and is the main funder of a charity under the leadership of a member of the House of Lords. The revelations that it is now under investigation in Hungary for alleged misuse of public funds have placed the role that thinktanks play in risking foreign interference and illicit money undermining our democracy firmly back on the radar.
“The Home Office should also look carefully at whether UK groups, such as the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation, that have benefited from funding funnelled from this Hungarian state-backed thinktank should have registered with the UK’s Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.”
The network of Orbán-linked connections within Reform doesn’t end with Roger Goodwin and James Orr. As for Farage himself, in April 2024, the Reform UK leader spoke at the National Conservatism conference in Brussels, headlined by Orbán. The event was organised by MCC’s Brussels’ arm and the Edmund Burke Foundation, where Orr serves as UK chairman. The foundation received $200,000 in 2024 from the Heritage Foundation, which authored the “Project 2025” policy blueprint for Trump’s second term, and maintains ties with the Danube Institute, another body funded by the Hungarian government.
In 2019, Tim Montgomerie, founder of Conservative Home and UnHerd, who defected from the Tories to Reform UK and remains an influential voice within the party, gave an address to the Danube Institute on the “the limits of liberalism” and the potential of its pro-natal family policies.
‘Stunning hypocrisy’
Critics have long pointed to the contradiction of Reform’s admiration of Orbán and his policies. Olivier Hoedeman of the pro-transparency group Corporate Europe Observatory argued Reform’s ties to Orbán’s pro-Kremlin government exposed “the stunning hypocrisy” of its claims to defend democracy and sovereignty.
But what will all this mean moving forward? For Hungary itself, the incoming Tisza Party government must begin the work of unwinding the system built by Viktor Orbán, of restoring institutional independence, of repairing relations with the European Union, and unlocking suspended EU funds to stabilise the economy.
Just as crucial will be whether it can reverse the outward flow of young, skilled Hungarians who left during the Orbán years and persuade them that the country offers a future worth returning to.
Beyond Hungary, the result may point to something broader. Across Europe, parts of the populist right appear to be encountering limits and have, dare we say it, peaked.
Marine Le Pen’s movement was recently stalled in local elections in France, where the far-right National Rally (RN) failed to win control of any major city.
While in the UK, Reform has stumbled in a string of by-elections, including its first electoral test at its ‘flagship’ council in Kent, where it lost to the Green Party. The contest was triggered by the jailing of one of its councillors for controlling and coercive behaviour towards his wife. Meanwhile, a recent Sunday Times poll shows support for Reform has dropped to its lowest level in over a year.
None of this amounts to collapse, but it suggests that far-right momentum is harder to sustain than to generate.
But for Reform UK, events in Hungary carry a more immediate political risk. Just as Nigel Farage’s association with Donald Trump may prove a double-edged sword with voters, so too could its long-standing admiration for Orbán, now that his model has been rejected at the ballot box, and figures within the party may face scrutiny with institutions like the MCC being potentially investigated.
That said, it would perhaps be naive in assuming Orbán’s supporters will go quietly. If anything, the tone was set before a single vote was cast.
Writing in the Telegraph ahead of the election, Tibor Fischer confidently declared: “Orban will win again and the Leftist chatterati just doesn’t get why,” dismissing critics as people who know “bugger all about Hungary or the meaning of the word authoritarian.”
The real problem, he argued, was that commentators were simply reaching for the wrong adjective. “The adjective they’re struggling to find is successful.”
That claim now reads rather differently. “Success” is a difficult label to sustain after such a resounding electoral defeat. And it’s even harder to reconcile with the 3.3 million Hungarians who turned out in record numbers to back Péter Magyar, and, in doing so, reject the very model they were told was working so well.
If Orbán’s “success story” has just been rewritten by voters, Reform UK may find it harder to convince the British electorate that it was ever the right model in the first place.
Thank you, Hungary.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch
