Darkness

Men in tuxedos and women in dresses dove under tables, like a scene from a dozen Hollywood movies, but now it was happening to meShocking. Unnerving. Unpredictable. Violent. For a decade I have been following the twists and turns of Donald Trump’s America with the privilege of journalistic distance. On Saturday night I felt the darkness come viscerally close.Bang! Bang! What was that? Where was it? At 8.36pm panic and pandemonium reigned in the cavernous ballroom at the Washington Hilton hotel. There were men running and cries of “Get down!” and “Stay down!” Continue reading...

Péter Magyar’s stunning victory in Hungary is a boost for liberal democracy. But don’t bank on similar upsets in upcoming European electionsWhen future historians come to write about the stunning electoral overthrow of Viktor Orbán on 12 April 2026, let’s hope they devote at least footnotes to zebras and golden toilet brushes. The zebras were spotted by drones on the sprawling grounds of a countryside palace belonging to Orbán’s extended family. The 72 gilded toilet brushes were said to have been bought at a cost of almost €10,000, for a lavish renovation of Hungary’s central bank. For Orbán’s opponents, such excesses became symbols of the rampant corruption among cronies of Orbán’s ruling party Fidesz, which drained Hungary’s economy and earned the country the worst ranking on the crookedness league tables in the EU, as Ashifa Kassam and Flora Garamvolgyi reported.In the end, it was disgust with corruption and how that corruption affected people’s livelihoods that were the main factors behind Sunday’s election rout. But the landslide achieved by Peter Magyar’s Tisza party – despite an electoral system designed to favour Fidesz – suggests that these eye-popping details were merely the last straws for a population desperate to reclaim their country as a functioning democracy. Continue reading...