There are still some from the center-right mistakenly holding on to the belief that with Péter Magyar they have elected a reformist conservative.
Fueled by resentment toward his opponent, Péter Magyar seemed oblivious to the danger of knowingly allying himself with Hungary’s traditional left — including undercurrents of the former Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) and the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP). While convincing his centrist voters that he personally represented a conservative center-right platform, he has secured a mandate for the political heirs of those who once bankrupted the state and impoverished large segments of the population.
While the global establishment celebrates Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s electoral defeat from Brussels all the way to Kyiv, there is a conspicuous silence about the fate of the Hungarian left. The right has returned to parliament in the form of Fidesz and the nationalists of Our Homeland (Mi Hazánk), albeit with its wings clipped. Meanwhile, the left-wing parties have all but disappeared into the dustbin of history — at least on the surface.
For Péter Magyar himself — a long-time beneficiary of the Fidesz political environment — the election was never about a clash of ideas, left versus right. He has no clear ideological profile or value-based political program. In line with severely narcissistic personalities, this duel has always been about personal resentment and the urge to get back at those who exposed his scandals and weaknesses. Péter Magyar’s politics is essentially about Péter Magyar. Just to highlight the issue with one particular example, the same man who entered the race for power by publishing and weaponizing a secret recording of his own wife is now calling for the resignation of Hungary’s well-respected and apolitical president, telling him to leave “with the dignity that he still has left.” He sees no contradiction in this whatsoever.
Four years ago, before rebranding into Tisza, the joint left-wing coalition proved to be a flop. Their leader, Péter Márki-Zay (C) at an election-rally in 2022. Photo: MTI/Illyés Tibor
But for those who have supported Magyar — and arguably those who hold the real power behind the emerging Tisza government — their goals go well beyond the “anything but Orbán” narrative. To them, this is about reinventing a continuity that was severely disrupted by sixteen years of Christian-conservative governance.
Simplifying somewhat, in the 1980s, a failing and weakened communist regime in near-bankrupt Hungary splintered into two main factions. One believed it could extend its Marxist rule through what it called “democratization” — limited reforms and a controlled opening of the economy to foreign investment — while preserving the essence of communist power. The second group sought to transfer its power, economic assets, and political influence into the new era by rebranding itself as a liberal, Western-style political movement. The main political heirs of the first group were the MSZP (Hungary’s “reform communists,” to use a commonly repeated misnomer). The second group became the self-styled liberals of the SZDSZ.
The two genuinely reformist parties that advocated national sovereignty, a strong civil society, and a clean break with the communist past were the MDF (Hungarian Democratic Forum) and Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz. Yet, as the April elections demonstrated, the economic and ideological elites — whose roots reach back as far as the era of communist dictator Mátyás Rákosi (1948-56) — possess remarkable resilience. They can survive decades out of government. Family connections have always played a major role in this phenomenon, a fact often overlooked in analyses of Hungarian society. Magyar’s own family background is archetypal of these privileged elites.
The last time these forces won elections (between 2002 and 2010), they left the country on the brink of bankruptcy and dependent on an IMF bailout. Rampant corruption and state-enabled financial scams — most notoriously the Swiss franc mortgage loans — impoverished large segments of the population. This traumatic experience enabled Fidesz to win the trust of a deeply scarred electorate four times in a row. After sixteen years, however, memories are fading, especially among the younger generation.
In terms of personalities, Bálint Ruff — Magyar’s new chief political advisor and the incoming minister in charge of the Prime Minister’s Office — best represents this transformation. A well-known figure from Hungarian socialist and liberal circles, former advisor to both, he is now shaping the political direction of the incoming Tisza government. As far as that direction is concerned, “conservative” it is not. Almost all the other appointments Magyar has made so far carry the imprint of the now-defunct liberal parties — greens and progressives alike — most notably in their strong allegiance to LGBTQ ideology. The most emblematic of these is perhaps the designated minister for education and children, Judit Lannert, who has become known not only for her strongly anti-Fidesz and pro-Ukraine social media activity, but also for her now-infamous rainbow-flag Facebook profile picture.
Azzal, hogy Ruff Bálint lesz a Miniszterelnökséget vezető miniszter, vagyis a csúcsminiszter, eldőlt, hogy milyen lesz az új kormány. Ha az eddig megnevezett minisztereket nézzük, akkor – korábbi pártjaik alapján – itt most egy Fidesz-SZDSZ-MSZP nagykoalíció alakult.
Ha… pic.twitter.com/n7EhlmE1ci
— Toroczkai László (@ToroczkaiLaszlo) April 23, 2026
Even Magyar’s extraordinarily politically fluid new transport minister, Dávid Vitézy — who has been associated with the Greens of the LMP party, then Fidesz, and now finally Tisza, all within less than five years — is a known LGBTQ activist who has joined the Budapest Pride March, an event Orbán tried (and failed) to ban. All this makes it amply clear why Magyar left his ministerial nominations until such a late date. He would have lost a significant portion of former Fidesz voters who switched to Tisza had they known that the rainbow flag would fly so prominently over the new parliament.
There are other examples supporting the claim that Hungary’s “good old left” has essentially morphed into the Tisza Party brand. However, it is a more complex task to pinpoint exactly what made them so successful this time, in contrast to previous electoral attempts. Fidesz’s astonishingly negative and counter-productive campaign undoubtedly played a major role. There were also genuine societal grievances and a general fatigue with the long-running conservative government. Yet these factors alone cannot fully explain what happened on April 12. The crushing combined effect of economic and political pressure from Brussels, the oil blockade from Kyiv, a relentless foreign-drafted anti-corruption narrative, and the legacy USAID-funded NGO network — amplified by US social media and tech giants — created a communication environment to which the somewhat tired domestic national-sovereigntist forces had no effective answer.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is a central figure of Hungarian and European conservatism. Bringing him down is essential for securing the long-term dominance of the Hungarian left. Photo: MTI/Miniszterelnöki Kommunikációs Főosztály/Kaiser Ákos
They clearly still do not. And that is an enormous problem. Magyar’s ultimate goal appears to be Orbán’s criminal conviction. Hungary’s planned rejoining of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office is a clear sign that he is preparing the ground for this. Should he succeed, it would deliver an epic blow not only to Fidesz loyalists, but to the Hungarian conservative sphere as a whole. And that is clearly the goal.
The forces behind Magyar — the surviving structures of the former MSZP and SZDSZ — want to use their crusade against what they call the “Orbán regime” as a pretext to crush their old historic rival: the Hungarian Christian national-conservative sphere.
That is why the next four years will be an existential struggle for the moral and cultural heirs of the nation’s founder, Saint Stephen.
Featured Image: MTI/Hegedüs Róbert
