The Twenty-Four Two Podcast

For 16 months, Marine Le Pen’s fourth bid for the French presidency seemed doomed as she appealed against a five-year office-holding ban after being convicted for embezzling public funds. Jordan Bardella, the 30-year-old chief of Le Pen’s nativist Rassemblement National (RN), was lined up to replace her and was out-polling all rivals at 35% for the first round of the election on 18 April 2027. Thi...

On June 18, a special election in northwest England will determine whether Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime minister since 2024, will face an immediate challenge to his premiership led by the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and former health secretary Wes Streeting. Following a referendum in 2016, the UK left the European Union in January 2020 and Starmer became Labour Party leader three m...

Last week’s election-eve podcast with Ábel Bede and Gabriela Greilinger was meant to be the last in Twenty-Four Two ’s special 15-episode series on Hungary. But, after the partying in Budapest and the incoming prime minister’s hilariously unforgiving first moves, we couldn’t resist a post mortem with political scientist Gábor Scheiring . Among the hot and bad social-media takes on Péter Magyar’s l...

This is it. On Sunday, Hungarians will vote to keep or kill Viktor Orbán’s 16-year “illiberal” electoral autocracy. To talk about the last days of the election campaign and opposition activists’ tempered hopes for regime change, Tim and Pepijn are joined on the Twenty-Four Two Podcast by Ábel Bede and Gabriela Greilinger from the invaluable English-language Hungarian Observer . Ábel, who is a free...

Fearing electoral defeat on April 12, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán begged for an endorsement visit from Donald Trump but will have to make do with an April 7-8 fly-by from vice-president JD Vance and his wife. That Orbán believes Vance’s endorsement could push him over the line is in keeping with an election campaign in which the ruling Fidesz party has focused on nothing but their champi...

It’s T-minus 14 days until an election that will decide whether Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister since 2010 and icon for global nativism, gets another four-year term for Fidesz or is ousted by Péter Magyar’s Tisza movement. In the final days of the campaign, Fidesz is throwing everything - allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use , claims of interference by the Ukrainian “ terrorist sta...

Open a history of Europe with “everything changed on the morning of Thursday 24th of February 2022” and you will have the undivided attention of the Twenty Four Two podcast. Roderick Beaton’s Europe: A New History , published today by Penguin, reframes the last 2,500 years as the story of an idea. Starting with the Greek city states and Herodotus’s conjuring-up of “Europe” as the antithesis of “As...

Just three Sundays from today, eight million Hungarians will decide whether to fire or re-hire prime minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz movement after 16 years in power. If these MAGA darlings are driven from office, it will be in large part due to their increasingly flagrant corruption. Losing 15 points since 2012, Hungary’s slide in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CP...

With less than a month to go until a make-or-break election in Hungary, consecutive four-term prime minister Viktor Orbán is desperate to distract voters from the dire state of the economy and his government’s finances. He and his Fidesz party have turned the dial to 11 in their campaign against Péter Magyar’s Tisza movement, who - they claim - plan to sell-out Hungarians to the EU and to Woke glo...

With just five weeks left before Hungary’s most nail-biting election in 20 years, independent polls show prime minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz movement trailing Péter Magyar’s Tisza party by an average nine points. Yet, a system rigged in Fidesz’s favour by 16 years of unconstrained gerrymandering, media control and pre-election fiscal bribes could still see MAGA’s closest European ally retur...

Six weeks from an election could see them defeated after 16 years of creeping authoritarianism, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party are pulling out all the stops - turning Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelensky into an outright enemy of Hungary and campaign mobiliser. For weeks, billboards and digital publications have been flooded with AI-generated pictures of warmong...

One of Orbánism’s greatest successes during its 16-year dominance of Hungarian politics has been its taming of the media. Mainstream publications Népszava and HVG have held the line but today, directly or indirectly, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz controls 80% of Hungary’s media market and actively hinders the work of independent outlets. The country now languishes in 68th place out of 180 in Reporters Wit...

In a little over 50 days, Hungarians will vote in a pivotal election that could remove Trump ally Viktor Orbán after 16 years as prime minister and replace him with Péter Magyar, a defector from Orbán’s Fidesz movement. If you want a respite from US politics but crave the battle between the open society and its enemies, subscribe to this weekly podcast covering a campaign that is rapidly turning i...

On April 12, Hungarians will vote in an election with ripple effects well beyond their borders. For the first time since 2010, MAGA icon Viktor Orbán looks beatable – at the hands of Péter Magyar, a defector from his Fidesz movement. If you need a detox from US politics but still crave a nail-biting battle over the future of liberal democracy, this is the podcast series for you. Dropping every Sun...

In April, eight million Hungarians will vote in an election whose results will resound across Europe and the US. For the first time in 15 years, MAGA icon Viktor Orbán looks beatable – at the hands of Orbánist defector Péter Magyar. Have you been deranged by a decade of Trumpism? Do you need a nail-biting battle over the future of liberal democracy, but without Orange Man? If so, this is the podca...

Donald Trump’s greatest success so far has been in bypassing Congress, packing the Supreme Court, and populating agencies and law enforcement with political loyalists. He failed to do this in his first term and paid the price in 2020. But, by sticking to the Project 2025 programme inspired by Viktor Orbán’s 15-year-long capture of Hungary’s institutions, Trumpism has made itself harder to dislodge...

When Hungarians voted in elections to the European Parliament in 2024, Dániel Róna was alone in predicting a 30% vote for the insurgent campaign of former regime insider Péter Magyar and his Tisza party. Since then, Magyar’s support has only grown so that, as a national election approaches on April 12, Róna’s 21 Research Centre – in common with all independent pollsters – is convinced that Viktor...

Very soon, eight million Hungarians will vote in an election whose results will resound across Europe and the US. For the first time in 15 years, MAGA icons Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz movement look beatable - this time at the hands of a defector, Péter Magyar, and his Tisza party. Have you been deranged by a decade of Trumpism? Do you need a nail-biting political battle over the future of liberal...

By mid-April, more than eight million Hungarians will vote in an election whose results will reverberate across Europe and the US. For the first time in 15 years, the conservative Fidesz party and Viktor Orbán – a MAGA icon and standard-bearer for global “illiberalism” – look beatable. Hungary’s fractured opposition has rallied around Péter Magyar, an Orbánworld exile, and is holding a steady doub...

Since President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the national assembly in June 2024, France has been going through its most acute political crisis in more than 50 years. The election that followed split the assembly into three factions - centrist parties previously loyal to the president (“Macronie”), left-wing parties grouped around La France Insoumise (LFI), and Marine Le Pen’s right-wing Rassemblement...

Today, Caleb Zakarin from the New Books Network foolishly chose me and The Chair as the subject for his inaugural Substack Live interview. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twentyfourtwo.substack.com