The Observer View: Beware the insidious pull of illiberal democracies

Consider Slovakia. Not for the first time this Eastern European country with the population of Minnesota is holding to ransom the EU’s efforts to wean itself off Russian oil and gas in order to stop funding the war in Ukraine. Last week its prime minister, Robert Fico, named his price for suspending his de facto support for Russia: energy subsidies to meet 100% of Slovakia’s costs in switching to alternative suppliers and losing the $500m in transit fees it earns each year in transit fees for Russian fossil fuels being piped across its territory.

In his efforts to blackmail the EU, Fico is merely an apprentice to Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister who has been at this game since 2010. Orbán has stayed in power by pandering to the social conservatism of Hungary’s rural voters, and he has wielded it far beyond his borders. He has tied Brussels in knots by bending the rule of law to his own ends and handing control of the Hungarian economy to favoured oligarchs. He has turned Budapest into a place of pilgrimage for populists from neighbouring countries as well as Turkey, Israel, the UK and US.

As David Aaronovitch notes, as Donald Trump’s Maga movement began planning his comeback in 2021, the then president of the Heritage Foundation – a powerful rightwing thinktank – called Hungary “a model for conservative governance”. This Hungarian model is restrictive and reactionary. It shuts down or co-opts the institutions that keep liberal democracies liberal and democratic:  universities, the courts, media organisations, charities and other NGOs. Orbán has placed fig leaves to hide the scars left by the removal of so many pillars of civil society. They take the form of state-backed thinktanks that critics call gongos – government-organised non-government organisations.

If the UK were still a member of the EU, it would – or should – be arguing for Hungary’s ejection. That it is not, shouldn’t stop making that argument in Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Madrid and Rome – particularly as the UK and EU get closer and the UK takes on more defence spending to secure Europe’s borders. If liberal democracy needs defending, it needs defending at its borders and of its institutions, from external threats and the autocrats within.

The transatlantic read-across is striking. The Hungary-hugging Heritage Foundation is not government-funded but its impact on Trump’s agenda via the scheme known as Project 2025 is undeniable. This 900-page document is the blueprint for a blizzard of executive orders that in less than six months has all but sealed the southern border, asserted unprecedented presidential power over the judiciary and invoked emergency powers to transform tariffs into multipurpose clubs with which to bludgeon allies and adversaries alike. Iconic US media outlets are manoeuvring to curry favour with Trump. Ivy League universities are divided according to whether or not they are willing to risk suing his administration to preserve their independence. Law firms have been turning down business defending them.

The critique of liberal democracy by the gongos of the new populist right is that it has been captured by groupthink that prioritises minority rights over faith, family and freedom, narrowly defined. This has the political benefit of uniting the hard right while dividing the left. It might carry more moral weight if in doing so it didn’t play directly into the hands of the world’s two most powerful autocrats, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, one of whom is redrawing the map by force while the other has put the world on notice that he intends to.

Most liberal democracies are too reliant on Chinese trade and goods to stand up to Beijing, but their voters are a source of hope. Fidesz, Orbán’s party, is trailing the opposition in polls. Hungary, Slovakia and Poland are irritants to the EU but their people support membership. Trump is as alive to polls as he once was to ratings, and voters could send him a message in next year’s midterms. If they don’t, the damage to the vital organs of American democracy could be permanent.

Photograph by Thierry Monasse/Getty