The news arrives from Budapest with all the gravity of a Viennese operetta: Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, now threatens to oust his own chosen president. Yes, the same president installed during the Orbán era, a loyalist through and through, suddenly deemed expendable. The EU, already staggering from the weight of its own bureaucratic sclerosis, watches this latest pantomime with the horror of a Roman senator observing a barbarian chieftain change his mind about which hostage to execute. The continent’s instability deepens, and as usual, Britain stands apart—aloof, smug, and perhaps for once, wise.
Let us not mince words. Orbán has long fancies himself a reincarnation of some Magyar warrior-king, defying Brussels with every illiberal decree. His regime, a masterclass in democratic backsliding, has turned Hungary into a test case for the endurance of liberal values. Now, he turns on his own creature. The president, a relic of the same authoritarian architecture, is to be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. Why? Because the EU, in its ham-fisted way, has frozen funds, poked at judicial independence, and generally annoyed the strongman. Orbán, never one to suffer a slight, responds by eating his own. It is a scene that would make Caligula nod with approval.
The deeper malady, however, is not Hungarian. It is European. The EU has become a museum of failed ambitions, a confederation of squabbling states unable to agree on anything beyond the next round of bailouts. France burns, Germany staggers, and the southern periphery decays. Into this vacuum steps Orbán, a figure who embodies the worst of nationalism without any of the redeeming grandeur. His threat to remove the president is not a sign of strength; it is a symptom of exhaustion. The man who once spoke of illiberal democracy as a model now cannot even keep his own puppets in line.
And Britain? As ever, we are the ghost at the feast. Having departed the EU, we watch these convulsions with a mixture of relief and Schadenfreude. Our own political theatre—the farce of Boris Johnson, the tragedy of Truss, the grey competence of Sunak—is hardly a model of stability. But at least we are not hostage to a continental system that rewards mediocrity and punishes dissent. The Orbán affair is a reminder that the EU, for all its pretensions to unity, remains a collection of nations with irreconcilable visions of governance. The strongman and the supranationalist cannot coexist forever. Something must break.
The deeper question is whether this latest episode is the beginning of the end for the Orbán era itself. History teaches that autocracies, even mild ones, are rarely stable in their succession crises. The president’s potential ouster could open a Pandora’s box of factional infighting within the Fidesz party. Imagine the scene: rival oligarchs jockeying for position, the economy faltering, the EU holding the purse strings. It is the stuff of a Gibbon chapter. And in the background, the European Commission, that bloviating assembly of functionaries, will try to spin this as a victory for rule of law. Spare me the delusion. The EU has neither the will nor the tools to discipline its members. It can shame, delay, and threaten, but it cannot govern.
Thus we arrive at the essential hypocrisy at the heart of this affair. The same EU that lectures the world on democratic values is helpless before a man who openly scorns them. The same Britain that left the Union to escape such dysfunction now watches a continent sink deeper into the mire. There is no lesson here, only a warning. Empires decay, nations fragment, and politicians play their games while the people suffer. Hungary’s president will likely be replaced by another Orbán loyalist. The EU will tut and wag its finger. And Europe will continue its slow, inexorable slide into irrelevance.
So go ahead, Mr. Orbán. Oust your president. Dance your little dance. The fall of Rome took centuries; yours may be quicker. And Britain, standing apart, will be there to watch the ashes settle.
