Bubble tea and all-day brunch, those reliable cultural signifiers for the social media age, seem as much in evidence in Budapest these days as old-school belle époque coffee houses and tourists queueing for Danube cruises. There’s something else new in the EU’s only one-party state: politics has returned.
For 15 years, Viktor Orbán’s electoral victories have been a foregone conclusion. But a credible political challenger to Orbán has appeared. Péter Magyar is no messiah: in fact, he is a defector from the ruling Fidesz party. But polls show Magyar and his new-ish pro-western Tisza movement are on course to defeat Orbán in April elections.
