International Karl Polanyi Society

Viktor Orbán has compared his carefully rehearsed diplomatic manoeuvring towards Brussels (and Strasburg) with the courting dance rituals of the peacock. The analogy also works for his relationship to George Soros. In fact, every scrap of liberal critique from western professors and journalists is grist for the populist mill. Whenever a representative of the Hungarian opposition sides with western critics in the European Parliament, this is trumpeted in the media controlled by Viktor Orbán as a betrayal of the national cause. Yet whenever European institutions come close to implementing measures that would threaten the foundations of the regime, the peacock changes his strut and rattles his trail to proclaim victory.

Observers have long argued that this ritualized dance cannot continue indefinitely. Some liberals in the west and opposition leaders at home have interpreted the compromise struck in December 2020 as a death knell for Orbánism. They are confident that the European Court of Justice will confirm the decision to couple financial aid to liberal norms of governance. But this will not happen quickly, and by the time it does the peacock may have won another election, making it impossible for foreign inspectors of the rule of law to deny his democratic mandate.

Boris Johnson has behaved similarly when bringing forward legislation that flies in the face of international law, only to withdraw it at the appropriate tactical moment. He too is very much the preening type. Yet even before his personal encounter with the Covid virus, he was beginning to seem less boisterous. No personal trainer can do much to improve that much-abused body. With his incompetent management of the pandemic, the Johnson who used to entertain his compatriots is more and more perceived as an embarrassment, especially among the young. As for Viktor Orbán, though he remains passionate about football, citizens who observe him on television alongside other leaders at summit meetings comment on his increasingly awkward gait.

What is the fate of ageing peacocks when their feathers fade? Both Johnson and Orbán have been ruthless in reshaping their parties to suit their personal ambitions. Even before Covid, there was no disguising the poor quality of those who survived the culls. The idea of grooming a successor is unthinkable. Both confirm Ernest Gellner’s dictum that a successful populist is an oxymoron.[2] Short of fascism, it is impossible to routinize populist power. Margaret Thatcher was an earlier leader who ruffled feathers for a while, finding convenient external enemies in Argentinian generals and domestic ones in coal miners and the “wets” of her own party. But it could not go on forever. Eventually some of the radicals she had promoted combined to oust her, before themselves morphing into a new stratum of “grandees” that Johnson would trash in the next generation. Viktor Orbán has outlasted most populists through inventing an unprecedented plethora of enemies: Brussels bureaucrats, good-for-nothing Roma, the supreme speculator George Soros, and waves of Muslim migrants. But there must be a limit. December 2020 also saw the fragmented political opposition in Budapest pledge to unite behind common lists in order to put an end to the “Orbán system” in the parliamentary elections scheduled for spring 2022.

It evidently suited both parties to delay the post-Brexit trade deal until there was no time left for detailed scrutiny and the eruption of further political controversy. It is unlikely that the cross-channel traffic chaos triggered by a mutation of the Covid virus just before Christmas played a decisive role. The EU certainly bargained harder with Johnson than it had with Orbán a few weeks earlier. Elements of deterrent and punishment were in play, even humiliation and Schadenfreude (this earlier loanword will surely outlast Willkommenskultur). As historian Ute Frevert has recently reminded us, in politics a great deal depends on the emotional dimension (The Politics of Humiliation. A Modern History. Oxford UP 2020). But when it comes to dealing with Britain, the economic component is vastly more important than it is in the case of peripheral Visegrád states. Boris Johnson has had to accept that the economy does matter after all (not least if he is to redeem promises to redistribute prosperity to the declining postindustrial regions that abandoned the Labour Party to support him). The EU can hardly allow unconditional market access to a turbo-capitalist competitor on its doorstep. But perhaps the need to sell all those postsocialist German cars is also important. The cars manufactured by Mercedes in Hungarian Kecskemét are not affordable for ordinary Hungarians. So long as the new electric production lines include vehicles with a steering wheel on the right, we can safely assume that Mercedes-Benz bosses are continuing to count on easy access to the British market.