surviving a british orbanism

December 12th was a bitter night for me and for many of us. It doesn’t matter in my case, as I have no direct responsibilities, but I made bad judgements in the last few years, as much as anyone. I thought the suburban areas of the south and midlands — the Remain areas — could be switched to either the Liberal Democrats or Labour, as an alternative to a right-wing Tory party dominated by Brexiteers. I thought, right until the last week or two, that this could prevent the Tories getting a majority. But people don’t, as a general rule, like hung parliaments — they like ‘getting things done.’

I haven’t lived in the UK now for quite some time. The old connections are fraying, I don’t know what is going on these days. There have been years of austerity now. Have people got harder?

If it’s useful, I’ve been thinking about Orbán’s government. What are the different things that could have frustrated Orbán since 2010? In other words, if Orbánism is now in the UK, what would be the best forms of defence? A few ideas, below.

1. Orban was able to separate a lot of a fragmented working class, and pensioners, from the left. The UK left, even after 12/12, is still much stronger than the HU left. not just in terms of membership, but also intellectually, in terms of policy. We’d need just one in ten Labour members to get active in a union, start developing networks at a grassroots level — modern forms of trades councils. We have a lot of untapped expertise. This can really make a difference and Orban has never had to face persistent grassroots, participatory organisation. So many things can be done…
2. We have more sense of a future, because although it can be overstated, younger people in the UK aren’t generally interested in nationalist politics. Culturally and politically we need to give them the spaces to participate.
3. Personalities matter, political capacity matters. There should be polyphony within Labour, reflecting a broad range of opinions, but “ordered”. We don’t have the luxury of ignoring capable people who are not from our faction, as Labour has done since 2016 (and unforgivably during election 2019). The Hungarian left has a huge dearth of talented left politicians — a few Greens is really the extent of it. We have more options, and we have to use them.
4. The messaging has to be repetitive, clear, consistent. For example, the Hungarian health system is appalling. But no one thinks it can be fixed by politicians. In 2019 people didn’t believe we could fix the NHS. We need detail in specific steps, a theme for overall renewal, and a technocratic edge.This means — across a range of issues — combining ‘populist’ rhetoric with expertise (see Blair/Brown era working groups on finance and industry).
5. We have to challenge the “false nationalism” of the new right — and our own patriotism is implicit when we link declining public infrastructure to specific individuals and specific actions. Every item of corruption represents a bunch of lost hospital beds. Deep personal attacks work. This did happen from 1993 to 1997. Remember fat cats? We need to talk of scavengers, feral creatures who are stripping our NHS of its assets — because they are. Fat rats. (I like cats). When it comes to defence and issues at which we’ve taken a hammering, we at least need strategies to suppress the Tory leads.
6. Organising initially on the basis of strengthening and reforming democracy is a good place to start for our parliamentary representatives. It may seem dry, and of course it won’t suddenly change the dynamic, but this shows that we’re serious about providing an alternative approach to didactic authority.