{"id":515614,"date":"2026-04-06T09:47:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T09:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/515614\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T09:47:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T09:47:12","slug":"what-happens-to-britains-radical-right-if-orban-loses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/515614\/","title":{"rendered":"What happens to Britain’s radical right if Orb\u00e1n loses?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n and Nigel Farage at the National Conservative Conference (NatCon) in Brussels, 2024. (Photo: MTI)<\/p>\n

This weekend, Hungary is holding what observers have described as the EU\u2019s most consequential election this year. <\/p>\n

Viktor Orb\u00e1n has presided since 2010 over what he calls \u2018illiberal democracy\u2019. He\u2019s also become one of the global figureheads of the radical right. <\/p>\n

Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and a growing number of figures on the British right have long looked to Budapest for inspiration. J.D. Vance is set to arrive there tomorrow to lend his support.<\/p>\n

With Orb\u00e1n\u2019s Fidesz party trailing in the polls – and growing allegations of dirty tricks by the incumbent ahead of Sunday\u2019s vote – I wanted to find out what\u2019s happening in Hungary, and what it might mean for Britain. <\/p>\n

So I commissioned Dan Nolan, a seasoned Hungary-watcher, to follow the money connecting Budapest and the British right. The results are well worth your time today.<\/p>\n

Before we get to Dan\u2019s wonderful piece, I wanted to update you on our membership drive. Nearly 100 of you have decided to support Democracy for Sale since we asked for your help just two weeks ago. We\u2019re incredibly grateful and if you\u2019ve already signed up, go ahead and skip down to Dan\u2019s reporting with our thanks. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you aren\u2019t already, please do consider becoming a paid supporter. Just 50 quid a year, or 5 a month, helps us fund complex investigations and vital cross-border work like today\u2019s piece. It\u2019ll also give you access to our members\u2019 only livestream later this month. <\/p>\n

We now need 10 new supporters each day to meet our goal of 2,000 by the end of the month. Will you be one?<\/p>\n

Yes, I’ll Support Democracy for Sale<\/a><\/p>\n

By Dan Nolan<\/p>\n

In June 2015, Hungary\u2019s state-backed tech festival, Brain Bar, had a special guest speaker: British historian Niall Ferguson. But Ferguson wasn\u2019t appearing in person. In a regional first, he beamed in as a hologram at a Budapest arts space.<\/p>\n

Ferguson started to speak, but the volume stayed on zero. Worse, the world\u2019s leading conservative historian was three feet tall. The hologram continued inaudibly until a panicked soundman appeared and \u201crewound\u201d the mini-historian like a Betamax tape.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Are Friends Electric? Ferguson beams into Budapest<\/p>\n

Eventually, Ferguson began his speech. Hungary, he said<\/a>, might have the answers to the West\u2019s \u201cinstitutional degeneration.\u201d With a nod to the upcoming Brexit referendum in his native land, Ferguson wondered aloud whether Budapest was \u201cthe perfect place to ask the question: What is Europe in the 21st century?\u201d<\/p>\n

A decade later, Viktor Orb\u00e1n has answered that question in ways Ferguson probably didn\u2019t anticipate. Using Hungarian public money \u2013 funnelled through legally insulated foundations partly funded by Russian oil revenues \u2013 Orb\u00e1n has built a cross-border network of populist right think tanks, journalists and activists.<\/p>\n

Over the intervening years, too, Budapest has become a stomping ground for many on the British right, from Matt Goodwin and Margaret Thatcher\u2019s former speechwriter John O\u2019Sullivan, to a cast of characters that includes commentators with salaries and contractual obligations to place pro-Budapest arguments in UK media.<\/p>\n

With Orb\u00e1n facing the most serious electoral challenge of his career on Sunday April 12, that network is no longer merely a cultural project: it has become active infrastructure in a live campaign, raising urgent questions about foreign funding, undisclosed influence and the outsourcing of political messaging to paid allies.<\/p>\n

Hungary under Orb\u00e1n funds a network of institutions designed to shape conservative debate both at home and abroad, encompassing annual events such as Brain Bar and CPAC Hungary \u2013 the first time the American Conservative Political Action Committee brought its annual conference to Europe \u2013 as well as universities, think tanks and media outlets<\/p>\n

Many of these nodes have ties back to the British right. Take the Danube Institute. The Budapest-based think tank was founded by John O\u2019Sullivan and employs mainly British and American fellows.<\/p>\n

The first wave of British recruits \u2013 O\u2019Sullivan, historian Norman Stone, traditonalist conservative philosopher Roger Scruton in his final years \u2013 lent intellectual credibility to Orb\u00e1n\u2019s project. A subsequent cohort included Douglas Murray, while Tim Montgomerie\u2019s role as Boris Johnson\u2019s social justice adviser was not renewed<\/a> after he was recorded, in 2019, praising the Hungarian leader\u2019s \u201cinteresting early thinking on the limits of liberalism\u201d and calling for a \u201cspecial relationship\u201d between Britain and Hungary, at a Danube Institute event in Budapest. Montgomerie has since joined Reform.<\/p>\n

By the early 2020s, the Institute had acquired a permanent London presence. Its \u201cAnglosphere Fellow\u201d David Oldroyd-Bolt is based in London where he often appears in The Telegraph, The Spectator and GB News and hosts a podcast series entitled \u201cView from the Thames.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Danube Institute is funded by Batthy\u00e1ny Lajos Foundation (BLA), which Orb\u00e1n repurposed from an existing organisation and gave the unusual status of a publicly managed body governed by private individuals, placing it outside ordinary treasury oversight.<\/p>\n

The specifics of what fellows are paid \u2013 and what they are required to produce \u2013 became public through contract documents obtained by investigative outlet \u00c1tl\u00e1tsz\u00f3<\/a> after a protracted legal battle. The Institute\u2019s payments to visiting scholars and guest speakers more than tripled in under three years: from \u20ac197,000 in 2022 to \u20ac730,000 in the first ten months of 2024.<\/p>\n

The contracts are explicit about deliverables. Fellows are required to give speeches, attend events, network, and place articles in Western outlets. The UK publications specifically named as placement targets: GB News, The Spectator, The Critic and UnHerd.<\/p>\n

US Christian writer Rod Dreher receives $8,750 a month. In 2023, Dreher, a noted Orb\u00e1n supporter credited with influencing JD Vance\u2019s conversion to Catholicism<\/a>, appeared at the National Conservatism conference in London alongside Jacob Rees-Mogg, Suella Braverman and Michael Gove.<\/p>\n

There are other financial ties between Orb\u00e1n\u2019s administration and the British right. A foundation set up in the name of the late Roger Scruton has received more than \u00a3512,500 from the Hungarian government<\/a> since 2023 \u2013 over 90% of its total funding.<\/p>\n

The Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation (RSLF) has used these funds to host events at leading British universities with speakers aligned with Budapest\u2019s cultural priorities. In 2023, the foundation invited US tech billionaire Peter Thiel to speak at Oxford, where he compared equality, diversity, and inclusion initiatives to the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n

Last year, RSLF hosted a conference called \u2018Now and England\u2019, where politicians from both the Conservative party and Reform spoke. Meanwhile, the Hungarian embassy in London hosted the foundation\u2019s symposium.<\/p>\n

Scruton\u2019s name also adorns not only a London-based foundation but a chain of more than half a cafes in Hungary, to which his widow, Lady Sophie Scruton, donated his library.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Anyone for a cup of Scruton?<\/p>\n

The RSLF\u2019s board connects it directly to the UK political mainstream. Michael Gove joined as a director in May 2025; Nigel Farage\u2019s adviser James Orr, a key figure in the Reform firmament, has served as a director since the foundation\u2019s creation.<\/p>\n

The Scruton Foundation\u2019s funding comes from something called the Mathias Corvinus Collegium. Described as Orb\u00e1n\u2019s \u2018pet university\u2019,<\/a> the MCC\u2019s chair, Bal\u00e1zs Orb\u00e1n \u2013 Viktor\u2019s political director, no relation \u2013 has said: \u201cIt is our goal for Hungary to become an intellectual powerhouse, in which MCC plays a key role.\u201d<\/p>\n

The MCC funds a sprawling network of think tanks, publications, fellowships and summits all pushing a radical right agenda \u2013 all bankrolled by the Hungarian government.<\/p>\n

The sums involved are remarkable. Founded in 1996 as a modest educational institution for talented Hungarian students, MCC was significantly enlarged in 2020 when Hungary\u2019s Fidesz-majority National Assembly transferred to it 10% stakes in two of Hungary\u2019s largest companies \u2013 energy firm MOL and drugmaker Gedeon Richter \u2013 along with $462 million in cash and $9 million worth of property. The combined endowment was valued at a whopping $1.7 billion: nearly 1% of Hungary\u2019s Gross Domestic Product.<\/p>\n

Much of this cash comes from Russian oil. MOL sources approximately 65% of its crude from Russia. According to an investigation by German broadcaster ZDF, MCC received around \u20ac50 million in MOL dividends alone in one recent year.<\/p>\n

Among the initiatives that this money has funded is MCC\u2019s Brussels outpost, launched in 2022 under the aegis of Frank Furedi, the Hungarian-born former chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party and a long-time contributor to Spiked, the online magazine that grew out of the RCP\u2019s network.<\/p>\n

Furedi\u2019s trajectory \u2013 from the Marxist far left to a Budapest-funded operation focused on opposing migration, net-zero policy and EU progressive funding streams \u2013 is not completely unique. His long time collaborator Claire Fox was put into the House of Lords by Boris Johnson.<\/p>\n

MCC Brussels declared income of more than \u20ac6.3 million in 2024, reportedly more than any other political think tank in the city apart from Bruegel. The advocacy group Corporate Europe Observatory filed a formal complaint over what it described as MCC\u2019s incomplete transparency filings.<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s election looks set to be the toughest yet for Orb\u00e1n since he re-won power in 2010 after ditching his previous centrist persona and pushing hard to the right. As Orb\u00e1n\u2019s poll ratings have faltered, the radical right internationale that Hungary has underwritten has become increasingly belligerent.<\/p>\n

In late February, Irish macroeconomist Philip Pilkington \u2013 who holds a double affiliation with the Danube Institute and the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs \u2013 posted on X that \u201cthe increasingly desperate Hungarian opposition is releasing really crazy polls now.\u201d The post was shared by AfD co-chair Alice Weidel, who accused the EU of \u201cdesperately trying to overthrow\u201d Orb\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

By mid-March, Pilkington was posting a thread on X accusing Meta of \u201cboosting [opposition leader] P\u00e9ter Magyar artificially\u201d and \u201csuppressing Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s posts.\u201d He named the Meta employee responsible for Central and Eastern European operations, described him as \u201ca Ukraine fanatic and an LGBT activist\u201d based on his personal Facebook profile, and published his details.<\/p>\n

The thread was amplified the same day by Fidesz government spokesman Zolt\u00e1n Kov\u00e1cs and by RT, Russia\u2019s state broadcaster. The distance between a Danube Institute fellow\u2019s personal commentary and material appearing in Fidesz\u2019s official pre-election communications had, at that point, effectively collapsed.<\/p>\n

Pilkington is not alone. In early March, MCC visiting fellow and recently failed Reform candidate Matt Goodwin delivered a keynote at MCC\u2019s Budapest Summit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Matt Goodwin in Budapest last month (Photo: The Hungarian Conservative)<\/p>\n

Goodwin has long been a fellow traveller in the Orb\u00e1n project. The previous month, at an MCC Brussels event, he claimed<\/a> that \u201cby the end of this century, one in three of the under 40s in the United Kingdom will be following Islam\u201d.<\/p>\n

Whether Goodwin\u2019s statistic came from ChatGPT<\/a> isn\u2019t clear but what we say is that he\u2019s been a direct beneficiary of Orb\u00e1n\u2019s politically-motivated largesses. Goodwin has been paid a salary of up to \u20ac10,000 a month, according to leaked documents obtained by Hungarian investigative journalists Direkt36 and reported by the Good Law Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s election could mark the beginning of the end of Orban\u2019s propaganda network. Most independent polls have consistently shown Magyar\u2019s Tisza Party ahead by double digits. Tisza\u2019s election programme commits explicitly to recovering MCC\u2019s state assets and ending the practice of using public funds to build political networks.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaxpayers\u2019 money can only be spent on education, research and genuine, merit-based talent development. We will draw a clear line between education and propaganda,\u201d the opposition has said.<\/p>\n

But unpicking Orb\u00e1n\u2019s network of radical right influence might prove easier said than done. Magyar would need a two-thirds parliamentary majority to alter the governance of foundations like the Danube Institute and MCC.<\/p>\n

But even a simple majority would likely mean fellowship contracts not being renewed and budgets for London events and media outlets being reduced. The Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation would need to find alternative sources for the \u00a3500,000-plus it receives annually from MCC.<\/p>\n

The newer cohort of British fellows \u2013 whose publication records and speaking engagements have been shaped substantially by Budapest\u2019s contractual infrastructure \u2013 would face a considerably thinner market for their work.<\/p>\n

What began as cultural outreach has evolved into a cross-border political network with a growing UK presence. Whether it can sustain itself without Hungarian state backing may be tested after Sunday.<\/p>\n

Thank you for reading. We\u2019re trying to reach 2,000 paid supports by the end of April to fund vital investigations. Will you help?<\/p>\n

Support Democracy for Sale<\/a><\/p>\n

The cost is just \u00a350 a year. Paid subscribers can add comments and access other exclusive content. You can unsubscribe at any time and receive a refund of your unused subscription.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n and Nigel Farage at the National Conservative Conference (NatCon) in Brussels, 2024. (Photo:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-515614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}