 Victor Orban today has passed legislation which fundamentally suspends democracy in Hungary, of course. So I'm going to just go to the Guardian right up of it. Hungary's parliament has passed a new set of coronavirus measures that include jail terms for spreading misinformation and gives no clear time limit to a state of emergency that allows the Nationalist Prime Minister Victor Orban to rule by decree. Parliament voted by 137 to 53 to pass the measures on Monday afternoon with the two-thirds majority enjoyed by Orban's Fidesz party enough to push them through in spite of opposition from other parties which have demanded a time limit or sunset clause on the legislation. The bill introduces jail terms of up to five years for intentionally spreading misinformation that hinders the government's response to the pandemic, leading to fears that it could be used to censor or self-censor criticism of the government's response. So this is an incredibly extreme piece of legislation. Not only does it suspend parliament and give all power to the executive, but it also gives the police extra powers. They can arrest people and jail people for five years if they spread misinformation. Obviously, it seems like it's going to be the government that defines what that is. So if there was a station like Navarra Media in Hungary and we were talking about how we don't think it's misinformation, we do think it was an outrage that the government adopted a herd immunity strategy, then changed it and pretended there was no change. But I imagine that's the kind of thing that can get you in trouble in Hungary. I mean, the most shocking thing here is that there is no sunset clause, so this is indefinitely. And obviously, as parliament aren't going to be coming back to vote on this, the only person who gets to decide when this emergency situation ends is Viktor Orban himself. Aaron, this pretty serious stuff. Is democracy over in Hungary? Well, I saw one of the comments just a second ago on YouTube saying that this is effectively dictatorship. It's not effectively. I mean, it is dictatorship. The idea of dictatorship came about in Rome. I think it's originally the Roman Republic. This is when we need James Butler. But the idea of dictatorial powers was that in an extreme situation, somebody could appropriate effectively the powers that would normally go to the Senate, et cetera. And they could all be accumulated in one or two people, actually, is how it worked in Rome. I think they had two people every year, and they sort of rotated it for six months because they obviously didn't want these dictatorial powers to become tyrannical powers. But it is a dictatorship. When you accumulate all the executive power into one person, like you say, with no sunset clause, I mean, that's really, really frightening. And so that is a dictatorship. I mean, that's just analytically the correct word to use. I find Orban fascinating, though, because he was an antisocialist. He was one of the key sort of politicians that came out of the Velvet Revolutions, the demise of the eastern states and so on. And their politics were only ever defined by an aversion to socialism, state socialism. Communism at that point, right? The communist party of... Yeah, actually existing socialism, which didn't function a lot of those. Because you had a lot of socialists who were against the communist regime in the eastern bloc. Well, this is where it gets interesting. So people like, I think, Vaclav, I always get confused in the Czech Republic, you have Vaclav Klaus and Vaclav Havel. But a lot of these people went from quite militant communists to being, which is a very common thing in this country too, Nick Cohen, David Aronovich, to being, you know, incredible anti-communists. But yeah, actually existing socialism. And I'm not saying the Rieckermann model worked before. There would have been some decent aspects, a lot of negative aspects, certainly in regards to the liberties, lots of negative aspects. But what we're seeing is this kind of wave post-89, this generation of politicians who were basically opposed to socialism, actually it turns out they're not that committed to liberalism either. So, you know, it does ask an intriguing question about the politics of anti-socialism and where does it end up. I think it's frightening because, you know, Hungary is not isolated in this respect. Hungary is the most obvious example. But actually the sort of democratic institutions, the democratic life of many countries in Central and Eastern Europe is, I think it's a bit of a crisis in the making. I mean, obviously we're seeing it play out now with Hungary. But Poland, you know, ultra-nationalism is an incredibly powerful political force there. The antipathy it has not only to Russia but also Germany, a couple of other countries as well. You know, ultra-nationalist forces in these places, they're very different to what you see in Western Europe, Southern Europe or even Northern Europe. And there's been this debate for a few years now, you know, the European Union is effectively three different groups of nation states. You've got the Southern nation states, they probably would leave the Eurozone if they could because they could run deficits, they could get a bit of growth going. You've got the Northern European states, they tend to run surpluses, they tend to have different cultural moors, the Scandinavians, the Dutch, the Belgians, the French, really the Germans. And then you've got the Eastern and Central Europeans who have only really had democratic politics since the early 1990s. So, yeah, it's a fascinating question, not just for the future of these countries but also the future of the European Union. You know, we had, I mean, we can get this up, this tweet from Mattia Renzi earlier on today, the former Prime Minister of Italy, basically saying that if the European Union don't call this out in Hungary, you know, it's a suspension of democratic politics, then what good is the European Union? What's it for? And it's a really good question. There's, I mean, what you hear a lot, and what I saw a lot of Tory commentators say on Twitter today is that, you know, aren't we glad we live in a country where we have a Prime Minister who's unwilling to sort of implement authoritarian policies to combat coronavirus. I suppose a couple of problems I have with that is that one, I think this idea that Boris Johnson is a real libertarian and hates, you know, an overbearing state, is a bit of an invention of his own PR machine. I mean, what do we know about Boris Johnson when he was Mayor of London, for example? He bought water cannons, which at that point were, you know, not, you weren't allowed to use them fundamentally. And the person who said, no, I'm not going to give you permission to use the water cannons was not a libertarian. It was Theresa May in the Home Office. So on that particular question, Boris Johnson was more authoritarian than May. This idea that he's, the reason Britain has been slow to react to coronaviruses because he's such a fan of freedom, I think is a nonsense. I think it has been far more to do, to be honest, which that he doesn't want to damage or interrupt business. But there also are the connections between the Conservative Party and Orban also are fairly strong. It's not like this is a completely alien force to our current government. So back in 2018, the Tories were the only governing party in the European Parliament to vote against condemning Hungary for attacks on the free press and judicial independence. Now, you might think, oh, that's pretty bad, but it was real politic at the time, they were trying to find any ally they could in Europe to try and help them get a better Brexit deal. I mean, I don't think that makes it forgivable to be the only governing party who sides with a regime that was a fairly anti-Semitic regime as well as being one that attacks the free press and judicial independence and has now made itself a dictatorship. But also it's not just a question of real politic either. There are some real, you know, ideological commonalities here. And the best example is probably Tim Montgomery, who is still, I think it hasn't been announced, he's left in any case, the social justice czar for number 10. So he's employed by number 10. And whilst he was still in that job, he traveled to Budapest to speak at Fidesz meeting and he says, Budapest and Hungary have been home, I think, for an awful lot of interesting early thinking on the limits of liberalism. And I think we are seeing that in the UK as well. So I hope there will be a special relationship with Hungary amongst other states. As a government advisor, right? So a government advisor saying, let's have a special relationship between Hungary now a dictatorship and Britain. So this isn't just some, you know, far away alien country. Thank God we're not Hungary. This is a country who a key advisor in number 10 wants to be a key ally of Britain because he thinks they've got, you know, lots of interesting things to say about liberalism. I mean, is the limit of liberalism democracy? I mean, because that's what Orban seems to have a problem with. Yeah. You know, these are very serious, these are very serious, thoughtful people. You know, they thought about the contradictions between popular sovereignty, democracy, and liberalism as a form of ultra nationalism and private property relations. You know, Chantel Mouff talks about this and the democratic paradox. There's a fundamental tension between that fundamentalism around private property relations and the idea that actually the majority of people might want to change those private property relations. It's why the idea of a liberal democracy can often be quite a volatile thing. So, you know, these are very, very sharp people and they know precisely what they're doing. And we have to remember that Orban, of course, is part of the Fidesz party. I've probably not said that correctly. But there are people to their right, like Jobbik, who are more right-wing, street fascists, param, you know, sort of have a sort of paramilitary far right aesthetic and so on. So, you have to think under conditions of rising antipathy to refugees, stagnating economy, pandemic, suspension of the rule of law, dictatorial powers for a charismatic right-wing politician, you know, people to his right are going to do very strange things as well. And so, you know, Hungary needs to be taken very seriously as the low staff for the future of these countries. And there is a thought-out, ultra-nationalist, authoritarian right-wing project. There's no other word for it. You know, we're not sort of doing Godwin's law here and comparing him to Hitler, by the way. It's not like Hitler for a bunch of reasons. You know, history rhymes but it doesn't repeat. You haven't had the complete demobilization of a military state like you did with Germany after 1918 and the kinds of fascism that gives rise to the same in Italy. But it is a project which is as right-wing and as authoritarian and xenophobic as they can, and in the 21st century. And like you say, it was being indulged by very senior people in the Conservative Party, not just Tim Montgomery but Roger Scruton, you know, people who would think of themselves as conservative intellectuals. And they wouldn't think of themselves as neoliberal intellectuals, right? It goes back to the point we were saying a little bit earlier, they're a neoliberal intellectuals in the Conservative Party or who've influenced the Conservative Party. Hayek, Friedman, these people come from a slightly different place. Yeah, actually, let's conservative politics more reactionary politics. That is to say, conservatism is kind of, and I actually, I can identify with this, you know, if things don't work, if you're going to change them, don't do it dramatically or if things do work, kind of let's just keep them ticking over, small c-conservatism. This isn't that. This is a reactionary politics which is about turning back the clock, very, very, very different.