“Viktor Orban is celebrated all across Europe” – so said an evening news show on a government-financed TV channel on the eve of last week’s ‘Article Seven’ vote on Hungary – where the resolution that could theoretically lead to the suspension of Hungary’s voting rights in the European Council was supported by two-thirds of the valid votes.
A newspaper close to the government printed Facebook and Twitter comments written by fans of Orban to ‘prove’ that the majority of European people were behind him.
While the result of the vote was definitely a miscalculation for Orban, he feels the event fits perfectly to his political narrative: the political elites in Europe are against him, while the people are behind him.
Ignoring the nuance that the European Parliament is, in fact, directly elected, he tried to reduce the importance of the vote, claiming that only “politicians of the past” voted against him, and the “pro-migration elites” are attacking him because they want to flood Hungary with migrants.
Like Donald Trump getting politically stronger with every new attack coming from the “swamp” that he says he wants to drain, Orban’s fight as the ‘David’ can be made even more heroic against the ‘Goliath’ of the Brussels elite after this vote.
Is this political game enough for him to win the European Parliament elections domestically? For sure.
But for changing the European political landscape? Surely not.
While Orban is increasingly open about his ambitions to become a serious European politician, there are five reasons why it seems it will be way more difficult than he thinks.
Five lessons
First, Orban overestimates the pace and depth of the populist revolution in Europe.
As Cas Mudde rightly argues, right-wing populists more represent a loud minority in European politics than the silent majority as they paint themselves.
As a Pew Poll in western European countries indicated, mainstream traditional parties are more popular and populist parties are less popular than it is usually assumed. And, also, voters still think the left-right divide more important than the mainstream-populist divide.
Realistic predictions indeed indicate a populist upsurge on the elections, but not a revolution that Orban expects and talks about.
The political forces that are supportive towards him now represent less than a third of the European Parliament.
While some of his silent or loud supporters will definitely gain strength (e.g. Lega in ENF), some others will leave the house: Tories in ECR, and UKIP members in EFDD, who defended Orbán on the vote on Wednesday will not be members of the post-Brexit EP.
And not even all of the populists are supportive towards Orban: most MEPs of Five Star in Italy for example, voted against him on the Article Seven issue, and they were unhappy with his visit to Italy and meeting with Salvini.
Second, immigration and the refugee crisis are not the only concerns of Europeans – as he assumes.
Orban thinks this is the topic…
