An animal is at its most dangerous when it is wounded, and the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, was already haemorrhaging supporters before a record number of people took to the streets on Saturday to support Budapest Pride, which his government had legally banned in March.
The pulsating, international, love-fuelled parade, which stretched more than a mile through Budapest’s most prominent landmarks, was everything the Hungarian far right hates. And for Orbán and his nationalist party, Fidesz, the public defiance of Pride organisers, European diplomats and those of us who filled the streets in spite of threats of facial-recognition surveillance, arrests and fines has dented his strongman reputation.
