How to beat Orbán? Copy him

Opposing Viktor Orbán is a formidable task. Support for his coalition hovers at around the 40 per cent mark while the parliamentary system makes it harder for opposition parties to break through. By 2018, all of the opposition parties, most of which are firmly on the left, realised they were individually incapable of breaking through. They began fielding joint candidates and had some early success when Gergely Karácsony won the mayoralty of Budapest. So they agreed late last year to select a common candidate for the prime ministership at next spring’s elections. Last weekend, a political outsider, Péter Márki-Zay, became the candidate.

Márki-Zay’s appeal comes from the idea that he alone can appeal to the largely rural, Christian and conservative electorate. Hungary, even more than the UK, suffers from having an outsized capital city and a cosmopolitan elite disconnected from ordinary people: 80 per cent of Hungarian voters live in rural areas.