For our final pod on Hungary I finally got to let loose on the gullible western "intellectuals" pushing the embarrassingly biased government-aligned polls, and I didn't even mention the pathetic sharing of the most obvious fake news about Magyar.

My colleague Ábel Bede from the Hungarian Observer and I had a great conversation with @242news.bsky.social, covering a lot of ground, from the final days of the campaign to MCC and the connections between the Hungarian and American far right. 🎙️🇭🇺 Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.

Under European rules this call to pause the fiscal rules means that within two weeks someone has to propose a new European fund to finance “investment” in whatever is related to the current crisis.

🔊Final 242.news Hungary election podcast out! Ábel Bede and @gabrielagreilinger.com join Tim G. Jones and @pbergsen.bsky.social for a state of play before Sunday's crucial election. Go to ... bit.ly/242podcast apple.co/40NZR7L bit.ly/spotify242pod bit.ly/242Hungary

Our final foreign interference in the Hungarian election is up. We speak to @gabrielagreilinger.com and Ábel Bede of the excellent Hungarian Observer substack on topics ranging from why Fidesz is losing support to its influence abroad, including MAGA world twentyfourtwo.substack.com/p/hes-more-o...

One week to go until the election in Hungary so about time we spoke to a biographer of Orban’s challenger, Peter Magyar. There’s more there than just a disgruntled former Fidesz insider, but he’s also clearly not the pro-EU liberal some seem to be hoping for.

@242news.bsky.social has done a great podcast series on the Hungarian election over the last few weeks, with stellar guests such as @kimlanelaw.bsky.social, @zecsaky.bsky.social, András Pethö, Stefano Bottoni, and others. Give it a listen if you're interested. ⬇️

Highly recommend

All the cool kids are now talking about Hungary ahead of the election in two weeks but we’ve been doing that for ages (3 months)! This week we had László Andor on the podcast to talk about Orbán and the EU and a bit on the economic conditions that allowed his rise and now potentially his fall.

🔊Podcast: "Hungary would probably be hit harder than many others" - @pbergsen.bsky.social and Tim G. Jones discuss Trump's energy-price gift to Viktor Orbán, Hungary's dire economy, the latest polls, and a vicious anti-Ukraine campaign. twentyfourtwo.substack.com/p/hungary-wo...

🔊Podcast: “Hungary is trailing behind Russia by 10 years” - Márton Schlanger of pollster Republikon joins @pbergsen.bsky.social and Tim G. Jones to discuss what the polls are telling us five weeks before Hungary's election day: bit.ly/3OXWIzt

🔊Podcast: Tim G. Jones, @pbergsen.bsky.social, Bill Farren-Price and @simontaylor71.bsky.social discuss 🇺🇦🇷🇴 energy dispute, Péter Magyar’s increasing poll advantage, fears of election delay, Viktor Orbán’s miscalculations around “Peak Trump”, and the EU’s wilful inertia. bit.ly/46ywz0f

Now that everyone is paying attention to Hungary thanks to Orbán’s threats to EU Ukraine policy, an obviously cynical campaign ploy, it’s another good moment to remind everyone we’ve been talking about the election and scenarios such as these for the last two months. This is our latest episode:

Finally some juicy stuff to talk about this week: a sex tape scandal and speculating how the election could be stolen, and some drama for the nerds in our discussion on the Hungarian central bank

Likewise, I really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks so much for having me on, @pbergsen.bsky.social and Tim!

Enjoyed discussing the European implications of the Hungarian election with @zecsaky.bsky.social and her explaining to me why in several cases I don't quite get it twentyfourtwo.substack.com/p/trump-hasn...

🔊New Podcast out! “Trump hasn't been the boon to Orbán that many expected” @zecsaky.bsky.social from @centreeuropeanref.bsky.social on the European impact of Hungary's election on the Twenty-Four Two podcast with @pbergsen.bsky.social and Tim G. Jones. twentyfourtwo.substack.com/p/trump-hasn...

🔊Podcast: “People are waiting for change, so there is a huge expectation” Hungarian 'red baron' Gábor Bojár explains why liberals should use Péter Magyar's to topple Viktor Orbán on the Twenty-Four Two Podcast. with @pbergsen.bsky.social and Tim G. Jones. twentyfourtwo.substack.com/p/people-are...

Given Trump’s heavy handed attempts to control the Fed, we thought it would be a good time to do a podcast on how the Hungarian government went about taking control of its central bank a decade ago with a former deputy governor who was at the MNB at the time open.substack.com/pub/twentyfo...

Biggest lie of the day must be him claiming to "actually like Emmanuel Macron"

🔊242.news podcast: “Péter Magyar is a much more dangerous opponent for the government than any other former challenger”. 2026 Hungary election special co-hosted by @pbergsen.bsky.social with pollster Dániel Róna on how Viktor Orbán can still win: open.substack.com/pub/twentyfo...

In our second podcast ahead of the Hungarian election we spoke about Orbán's political and ideological journey with his biographer Stefano Bottoni twentyfourtwo.substack.com/p/the-point-...

🔊242.news podcast: "The point is how Orbán can react to a possible defeat". 2026 Hungary election special co-hosted by @pbergsen.bsky.social with Stefano Bottoni on Viktor Orbán's political odyssey. Listen and subscribe (free) to www.242.news at: twentyfourtwo.substack.com/p/the-point-...

🔊Podcast: “Hungary is to the American right what Sweden used to be to the American left”. The new weekly 'Twenty-Four Two' 2026 Hungary election special series opens with @kimlanelaw.bsky.social. Listen and subscribe (free) to www.242.news at: twentyfourtwo.substack.com/p/podcast-hu...

In the first episode of a podcast series ahead of the Hungarian election in April, my colleague Tim Jones has @kimlanelaw.bsky.social on to discuss how Orbán spread his ideas to the rest of Europe and the US. I’m rather biased but thought this was very insightful. open.substack.com/pub/twentyfo...

Tim Jones has a new podcast series spotlighting Hungary as part of the spread of autocratic threats to democracy around the world. New episodes will drop every Sunday from now thru the HU election. I'm delighted to be the first guest to kick off the series! substack.com/home/post/p-...

I found the campaign in the Netherlands very frustrating and was even more annoyed by all the hot takes suggesting the result marked a defeat for the populists, so I tried to write my anger away open.substack.com/pub/twentyfo...

Complete coincidence that the European Commission decided to demonstrate the benefits of the tariff ceiling they negotiated with the US with a comparison with a country with a 10% tariff. It could refer to either Brazil or the United Kingdom, wonder which one they were thinking of.

The German people have spoken: they want their Schwarze Null and crumbling infrastructure back

A classic bit of EuroCope to suggest the Europeans caving to Trump was due to strategic errors. In reality, they're unwilling to suffer the economic pain required to do so. The French should know this after they folded instantly when Trump threatened to tariff wine earlier this year.

He did say recently that the EU is nastier than China, so a higher tariff than China is just simple consistency

In our podcast this week @timgwynnjones.bsky.social and I discuss several good reasons for why the ECB might hold at 2% for a while after its June cut, and also I point out that it’s “a nice round number” podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/m...

Visiting Switzerland is a strange experience. Everything is very nice, the trains run on time, and there’s always a mountain in the background. But most alienating of all is seeing banks advertise with 5 year mortgages rates of 1.17%

Can’t wait to pay more for my iPhone in Europe just so Tim Apple can compress his margin in the US to avoid angering Trump on.ft.com/4lp5MZT

We've already established that the formula is ... well ... nonsense. But in the Swiss case, the figures are inflated by investors moving gold into the US at the end of last year due to - that's right! - the threat of tariffs. Exclude those flows and Swiss exports would be subject to 20%.

Very important intervention by @catherinedevries.bsky.social — now that elite consensus on strengthening European militaries has emerged, it is crucial to create genuine mass support, which means being open about the costs it will take.

So far European rearmament has meant more financial engineering than military engineering. Interesting to see the UK considering joint European defence spending but just moving ever more off-budget is not going to avoid the difficult budgeting choices caused by rearmament. on.ft.com/3Yf2bDL

I feel for the future economic historians who have to explain that this wasn’t even because the president’s adviser owned a domestic car firm www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Silly to exclude the UK from this unless you’re 100% certain there will be an EU-UK security agreement very soon on.ft.com/3DEIpux

If we're doing austerity in the UK the first thing that needs to go is these stupid monthly GDP release. The debate here was already overly focused on headline growth rates and has now been completely poisoned by these largely meaningless but overinterpreted estimates

First economists are speaking of a 'real game changer'. To me, exempting defence from the debt brake is even better than a new special fund, as it allows for long-term planning, as the old special fund forced the government to spend quickly always under the shadow 'but what when the fund runs out'

Incredible how fast things have moved in Germany. From no debt brake reform two weeks ago to exempting defence spending above 1% from it and announcing a €500bn infrastructure fund that nobody had even considered last week

I thought the video Macron posted about his charm offensive was actually pretty cool, Trump clearly doesn’t agree

Interesting that inflation didn’t play much of a role, only 5% of Germans mentioned it as the most important theme in their decision

More importantly, as always, SPD is NOT the main supplier of new AfD voters. Most new AfD voters did not vote in 2021 (not only first voters!). Right-wing parties CDU and FDP were main suppliers. Despite hype, BSW took virtually nothing from AfD.

Very interesting to look at the age distribution in the exit poll. The SPD which already did very poorly with young voters last time continues to loose further there - a party of pensioners. Interestingly, also huge losses for the Greens among young voters and massive gains for the Linke.

Think this explains the rather mediocre CDU result: German voters don't forget and still blame them for the countries' problems to just about the same extent as the SPD and Greens but the CDU is seen as responsible the high number of refugees

Basically a bog-standard European election result