Greetings from Ukraine. I was supposed to spend last night in Budapest, but by early afternoon there was a palpable sense on the streets that something big was coming. So I figured I'd rather take my chances with Putin's incoming drones than hordes of Hungarian hotties high on their impending liberation from the Orbán terror. Because of some or other incident on my preferred TransCarpathian frontier post, I was obliged to detour via south-eastern Slovakia. Pleasant, if you're interested, and I encountered a nun in a full-length habit, which I don't think I've seen on a Montreal street in half-a-century. I'd been planning this trip for awhile on the assumption that this war would be coming to an end. But one consequence of yesterday's election is that the principal opposition to the EU's proxy-war-without-end has been vapourised, and Brussels can now fight on till the last Ukrainian male is either dead or servicing Sir Keir Starmer at one of his many North London properties.
Here's how Eva Vlaardingerbroek, late of this parish, sees it:
Looks like the last bastion is gone.
The Hungarians are about to learn the true meaning of "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."
And the rest of us in Europe have just lost our only real stronghold against the EU.
Devastating. https://t.co/2jgk2dSBnS
— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) April 12, 2026
The point about the two-thirds super-majority necessary for constitutional change is well-taken. The new government will be able to reconfigure the Hungarian state to ensure that nothing like Viktor Orbán ever happens again. Which was the goal of the Eurocrats all along. So, quietly but ruthlessly, Cruella von der Leyen has pulled off her regime change. And without a smidgeonette of shock'n'awe.
As to why the news is "devastating", consider the so-called "rise" of "populism" in Europe: Marine LePen is the eternal bridesmaid of French politics, so near and yet always so far; Geert Wilders eventually "won" a Dutch election, but was excluded from government anyway; Giorgia Meloni made it to the Prime Minister's office but was almost immediately neutered into submission. Only Viktor Orbán gained power, held power, and used it to legislate against the existential threats to European identity.
And now he's gone. As the BBC could not forebear to crow:
Orbán era swept away by Péter Magyar's Hungary election landslide
So this is not just the Continent's usual one-step-forward-two-steps-back. In his long tenure, Orbán explicitly addressed the demographic crisis and managed to bump the fertility rate up from 1.25 babies per woman to 1.55, where it appears to have stalled. He built a wall on the southern border. On the other hand, he somewhat neglected the more basic economic issues in ways that democratic politicians do at their peril (hint). Still and all, as I noted yesterday, Hungary stills feel like Hungary, in a way that Sweden and Germany no longer feel Swedish or German.
Another young Dutch lady of my acquaintance said to me not to so long ago that life in the Netherlands was becoming intolerable. Since expressing her views politely but honestly on television, she was being hassled and intimidated on the street and on the subway. She had been offered refuge in Hungary, but wasn't sure she could stick the food as a year-round diet rather than a once-in-a-while novelty. On this grey morning after, the goulash is the least of it, but not entirely irrelevant. "Viktor should lose some weight," one of his associates told me over the weekend. "He can't," responded another. "It's the medications he's on." But these things matter. So the only guy offering a genuine alternative to EU conventional wisdom appeared puffy and exhausted, while the hack willing to re-imprison Hungary within the clapped-out Brussels consensus seemed fresh and dynamic.
The European establishment are an unlovely crowd but they are serious about confining Continental politics to uniparty parameters - ie, as I always put it, no change can be permitted to anything that matters. And the problem remains as always that we are not converting enough of our fellow citizens fast enough. Which is why, as I have also said, we are in the western world's last election cycle: after 2030 it will be impossible to correct course by democratic means. That's why I'm in Ukraine, training as a drone operator.
~We had a very busy weekend at SteynOnline, beginning with Mark's column on the still-born ceasefire. Saturday's edition of his weekend music show found Steyn tallying his bananas, while Rick McGinnis's movie date plumped for an Ealing comedy of Scots bent. On Sunday Mark offered a song for tax season, and or marquee presentation was the latest installment of Mark's highly prescient demographic bestseller, America Alone.
If you were too busy this weekend negotiating in Islamabad, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.