Show Notes
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 into the dirtiest in the post-communist era - culminating in the threatened release of a illicitly filmed Magyar sex tape. The tricks could get a lot dirtier, warns this week’s guest Géza Jeszenszky, Hungary’s first post-communist foreign minister. Together with prime minister József Antall, he began the process of Hungary’s accession to the EU and NATO and sought to repair the now century-long damage caused by the Trianon treaty that ceded more than 2 million ethnic Hungarians to modern-day Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine. At every election since 2010, Orbán has created bogeymen like George Soros to motivate his base. In 2022, he stoked fears that Hungarians would be sucked into a western war against Russia. In the four years since, his peacenikery has since evolved into a full-on anti-Ukrainianism that is growing as election day approaches. In the past week alone, Orbán has described Ukraine as Hungary’s “enemy” and the EU’s plans to fast-track Kyiv’s accession as an “open declaration of war” against Budapest. Jeszenszky fears this hysterical rhetoric is less about mobilising support and more about laying the groundwork for a constitutional coup - a fear that only grew after reports in the Fidesz-allied media of threats by a ‘Ukrainian soldier’ to bomb schools in Hajdú–Bihar county. “My fear is that the very opposite is in his mind or in the mind of people around him: to postpone the election, not to hold the election,” he says, pointing out that the Fidesz-dominated parliament recently extended Hungary’s Covid-era emergency laws until mid-May. “Many of us, many Hungarians who are not really too friendly to Orbán can imagine that a kind of false flag operation may be committed - obviously directly by Russians or with the help of Russia - and something may happen, which can be presented as an act of aggression against Hungary”. Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - newsletter focused on the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.
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More from The Twenty-Four Two Podcast
Six months before its most consequential presidential election since at least 1981, France is going through a severe financial crisis. For decades, presidents and parliaments have ducked difficult budgetary choices, surrendering to the street and borrowing to buy social peace. But, today, after a string of economic shocks, the political class has run out of road. Governing without a majority in the national assembly since 2024, Emmanuel Macron’s governments have struggled to pass budgets that have done nothing more than stabilise the deficit, leaving the debt to balloon to 120% of national output. Economic growth is stagnating as rising interest rates drive up the cost of servicing the debt to more than €90 billion in 2027, outstripping spending on education and defence. Yet, politicians are still not explaining the crisis or its remedies to the public - something that maddens Jacques de Larosière, a veteran Fifth Republic policymaker who ran the Treasury, the Bank of France and the International Monetary Fund. “In a democracy,” he tells the Twenty-Four Two podcast, “the objective of electing people in parliament is not to have a detailed statement by each of the people … on the public finances. It’s not that. It’s the idea that, when you are elected, you have to tell the truth. You have to say the situation is serious but, if you don’t say that in a democracy, if you tell them fairytales, you’re not a democrat”. From January, Twenty-Four Two will begin a weekly series on France leading into the two-round election in April and May. This is the first of three pre-series teasers. Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022. Subscribe (free) to the podcast and to 242.news.
On August 29, Icelanders will vote in the country’s fourth national postwar referendum and, amazingly, its first on the European question. The polling is neck and neck over whether this sparsely populated but strategically important island should restart the negotiations it suspended 13 years ago over whether Iceland should join the EU. This decision by the country’s 230,000 registered voters will have ramifications well beyond the Arctic. For 60 years, the European communities (now the union) have been a unique magnet for countries in the old continent. Starting with six member states, the EU now has 27 and another six in active accession negotiations. But these take time. A long time. And, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and US threats to annex Greenland and withdraw security guarantees for its oldest allies, Europe needs new military architecture and fast-track integration. Could Iceland model a version of this? Although it’s outside the EU, Iceland has been a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), Europe’s 30-nation single market, for 32 years and of the Schengen free-movement area for 25. This referendum is about extras only - extra benefits and extra annoyances. Icelanders are being asked whether their government should start negotiating for representation in the union’s institutions, membership of the EU’s agricultural and fisheries policies, and the euro. “That’s why it’s 50/50,” political scientist Vilborg Ása Guðjónsdóttir tells the Twenty-Four Two podcast. “I mean, there’s no real urgent reason to join as things stands. For me personally, I think the strongest reason would be to be in the midst of accession talks while we see how things develop globally in the next two or three years with the US: who’s going to take over from Trump etc. I think that’s the strongest reason: being on a team that’s going to be there for you when things go insane, which they have been doing … I know people in Greenland, quite a few and personally, and this was an absolute … and, to a point, still is an absolute nightmare. So I feel like we have to. It’s only responsible for us to take that into the equation”. Twenty-Four Two, hosted today by Tim G. Jones, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.
Equipped with a constitution-rewriting supermajority, Hungarian prime minister Péter Magyar and his Tisza Party cabinet just marked their first 100 days in power. And ‘power’, rather than ‘office’, is the right word as Magyar moves at speed to dismantle the Fidesz state built over four consecutive terms by his predecessor, Viktor Orbán. Their initial popularity has dipped after a misstep over the appointment of a new president but Magyar and Tisza still command 60% national support - founded not only on a desire for political change but on hopes for economic stabilisation and swift entry to the euro area. After their 16-episode pre-election series on Hungary, Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen are checking in on Magyar’s 100-day honeymoon - helped by Pepijn’s recent research trip to Budapest. “It’s been basically scorched-earth tactics with regard to getting rid of as much as possible what remained of the Fidesz regime,” he says. This is necessary and popular but the government is facing major challenges as it readies Hungarians to swap their forints for euros early in what it hopes to be its second term. Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones and Pepijn Bergsen, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.
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. This week’s appeal court ruling ended Bardella’s dream. Le Pen will run again, and two post-appeal polls show her not only matching Bardella’s first-round score but winning a run-off against centre-right challenger Édouard Philippe. Like we did for Hungary’s pivotal election this year, Twenty-Four Two will run a weekly French election podcast from January until decision day on 2 May 2027. As a taster, host Tim Jones invited political scientist Philippe Marlière to discuss the court decision, how a Le Pen victory will remake the French right and what the exit of Emmanuel Macron and Jean-Luc Mélenchon will mean for the left. “What Le Pen reminded … party members and colleagues is that she is the boss, and she was always the boss,” he says. The party “remains in the hands of lepénistes. Bardella has few supporters in a party … [that is] really devoted to Marine Le Pen”. Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.
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 months later, swiftly imposing a Brexit omertà on the centre-left. Instead of endless debate, he said his government would “Make Brexit Work” outside the 30-nation single market (the European Economic Area, EEA). Even supposedly ardent Remainer ministers fell silent for five years. That’s now over as a Labour Party leadership election looms and polling reveals widespread Bregret across every region and demographic group except the over-65s. But what does it mean in practical terms? To reunite a fracturing left-wing vote, should Labour offer a multi-year programme to rejoin the EU? Or, instead of pursuing something so ambitious, should it plan to return to the EEA, or seek sector-by-sector agreements like Switzerland? To discuss the options, host Tim Jones brought together Peter Foster, the Financial Times’s world trade editor and author of What Went Wrong With Brexit And What We Can Do About It, and Neil Kinnock, the Labour Party’s leader from 1983-92 and European Commissioner for transport and administrative reform from 1995-2004. “We’ve got to really assert, because it’s backed by all reality, that our special relationship is with neighbours 21 miles away,” says Kinnock. “And all the mythology – and a lot of it is mythology – of our special relationship with the United States of America has to be displaced and replaced by a recognition of unavoidable realities”. “The British public are as ‘cakeist’ about Europe as their politicians are because the politicians have never explained to them what the trade-offs are. They’ve never made the arguments, and Keir Starmer is the worst in some ways for that,” says Foster. “I think it is a genuinely difficult and bleak prospect. In some ways, maybe the thing that has to happen is something really bad, where it becomes really obvious that economically and strategically our position lies with Europe”. Twenty-Four Two, hosted by Tim G. Jones, is a podcast from 242.news - a Substack newsletter covering the destructive recreation of Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24/2/2022.