Watching the results roll in last night from Budapest, you will have witnessed crowds of young Hungarians celebrating the fall of the regime which, as they saw it, had prevented Hungary from traversing the long arc of history and joining its European neighbours in progress and prosperity. Online, however, a different mood percolated. Scrolling the X timeline, you might have come across the posts of various “academics”, “policy wonks” and general “thinkers” with little clear connection to Hungary, who nonetheless seem to have taken Viktor Orbán’s defeat rather personally. One Anglo-Irish “economist” in particular stands out among the crowd, his feed slowly transforming over the course of the day from triumphal chest thumping, to desperate cope, to resigned disappointment. His story is not unusual, but it tells the tale of something bigger.
Born in Ireland in the mid-1980s, Philip Pilkington is emblematic of a generation which once imagined itself as the protagonist of a historic struggle, yet never quite saw its revolution realised. Never having known a time before Margaret Thatcher’s transformation of the British economy, and being too young to feel the pain of the left’s wilderness years, millennials viewed Tony Blair’s moderation not as a necessary movement with the times but as a capitulation in the face of injustice. The Iraq War cemented a moral landscape that had arisen from the intellectual firmament of the New Left, but any political project aiming to revise the neoliberal settlement still had to contend with the fact that, for most people across the country, it had delivered two and a half decades of (relative) prosperity, much as it might have left some behind in doing so.
The 2008 crash came as the ultimate vindication for the millennial left: the avarice and cruelty that had led New Labour to embrace war and wealth was not a necessary price of good government, but the root of a fundamental instability which, in accordance with the great moral arc of the universe, had finally come crashing down on the heads of the very people who created it. For Pilkington, who as the crash reached its peak was just completing a BA in journalism at the Independent College, Dublin, it solidified a lifelong quest: to bring down the liberal order, and the injustices it supposedly wrought.
Having spent several years as a freelance writer and journalist in Dublin, Pilkington embarked upon an MA in Economics from the University of Kingston. He then joined the Kingston-based Political Economy Research Group, a “radical post-Keynesian” outfit much in line with his own left-wing politics at the time. But as the priorities of the left largely shifted from issues of structural economics to issues of structural racism, Pilkington’s politics shifted too. Following a well-trodden path, he came to see the right, not the left, as the preferable vehicle for an anti-liberal project, and set out to develop a new paradigm for conservative government.
There was only one constraint on Pilkington’s ambition – his credentials, unlike the title of his 2016 book (The Reformation in Economics: A Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Economic Theory), were modest, and prestigious academic opportunities which would confer the necessary influence did not avail themselves as a result. Moreover, on the British right of 2016, there was little appetite for his recommendations, with dreams of Singapore-on-Thames still holding sway over those anti-establishment elements which might otherwise have been amenable. Ironically, Pilkington turned to the world of finance capitalism to find work which would allow him to develop his theories, albeit only insofar as they turned a profit.
In another world, that might have been the end of Philip Pilkington, at least as a public intellectual. But 1,000 miles away, destiny had other plans. The Danube Institute was founded in 2013 by allies of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán as his party was consolidating its grip on Hungarian institutions following its return to power in 2010. The institute’s purpose, alongside a wide array of similar institutions centred on Budapest, was to develop an alternative intellectual ecosystem around Fidesz, based broadly on national conservative and post-liberal ideas.
As the Western world followed Hungary rightwards in the years afterwards, the Budapest scene grew from its original status as the intellectual engine of Orbánism into a centre of right-wing thought which held sway across Europe and even in North America. The strong connection between these institutions and their parallels in the United States (the Heritage Foundation, the Claremont Institute, etc) has been a key factor in the second Trump administration’s support for Orbán, beyond shared political interests in weakening European unity (for all Orbán’s talk of national sovereignty, he sure has done a great deal to prevent European attempts to establish control over the operations of US tech companies on their continent). Conservative intellectuals from across Europe, and especially from Britain, descended on the Hungarian capital, where they found like-minded individuals and a lively social scene, as well as that rarest and most desirable thing in right-wing political activism: plentiful funding.
It was in this world that Pilkington found himself in 2023, after developing a curiously spontaneous interest in Hungarian politics – much as so many others did at precisely the same time. He took up a position as a senior research fellow at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, and shortly after as a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute. With that platform, Pilkington became one of the primary mouthpieces of the Budapest scene – and for Orbán himself – in the English language. Alongside a symphony of other voices, including president of the Danube Institute (and former Thatcher advisor) John O’Sullivan, he sought to explain to English-speaking audiences how Hungary had triumphed over liberalism, and how they could do so too. For the most part, the plan seems to start with banning pornography – in fact, Pilkington seems to have a particular obsession with the subject. What comes next, unfortunately, is far less clear. One hopes his suggestions are more reliable than his predictions, which have included the imminent collapse of Nvidia, the inevitable resurrection of Assad, and of course the eternal victory of Fidesz.
As of Sunday, which saw Orbán’s landslide defeat in the midst of ongoing corruption scandals and, far more importantly, deep economic stagnation (to which Orbán has responded by tarnishing the hardline anti-immigration record which has been so important to his success, opening the country to significant inflows for the first time), that advice may not be so eagerly followed. As the new government closes off the flow of money from Hungarian taxpayers into this network, Pilkington – along with many of his fellow émigré gadflys – may soon find himself out of a job, with neither the credibility nor the platform to continue his mission.
As someone very much of the right, I might be expected to conclude this piece with despair. After all, Budapest has been the backbone of the European right for 15 years now, with Orbán the model for many aspiring populist leaders – or at least, it has tried to be. Yet I can’t help but feel a sense of relief at this result, even if it might prove disadvantageous to Hungary in the long run (and the jury is still very much out on that). Orbán’s attempt to build an alternative intellectual sphere shows an understanding that one cannot construct a durable political settlement on the basis of one person holding high office, and for that, he should be congratulated. Nevertheless, the purpose of an intellectual sphere is to generate solutions to be implemented in government, and, more importantly, to build an ideological basis which can galvanise support now and into the future.
On both of these counts, the Budapest scene has been a failure. For all its vaunted efforts, Hungary has failed to push birth rates above replacement despite the huge expense of its pro-natalist policies. It has failed to construct a new economic model, or even to run that which already existed well. It has failed to reconstruct Europe in its image, serving instead as a block to necessary reforms (now led in large part by fellow right-wing populist Giorgia Meloni) and aligning itself with the decrepit Putin regime, much to the detriment of Hungarians and Europe as a whole. Most of all, it has failed to convince Hungarians that it is the future. Encountering young Hungarians over the past few years, one will commonly find a reticence to be associated with their home country. In fact, most seem to be embarrassed to be connected with a government they see as archaic and reactionary. A party can win an election on the votes of the elderly, but any regime that young, cool, talented people are embarrassed to associate with cannot survive for long.
It is for this reason that the fall of Budapest gives reason for hope. So long as the right is enamoured with what is fundamentally a doomed project, it cannot turn its sights towards anything more fruitful. Regardless of one’s politics, it is clear that our societies in the West will be very different in two decades’ time. As John Bew recently identified in these pages, we have reached the end of some kind of road, and a new path forward will have to be found. It is in the interest of us all that both the left and the right can offer a reasonable, clear-sighted and compelling pitch to define the future at such a pivotal moment. We all have plenty of shibboleths to burn before seriously approaching that task. As for Pilkington, we can only wish him well. Perhaps he could use what will be his ample free time in the near future to learn Slovakian – I hear it’s all the rage in Budapest nowadays.
[Further reading: Michael Ignatieff: Global Orbánism is over]
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