The EU’s core values are under attack as never before. It must defend them | Timothy Garton Ash

As Hungarian-style authoritarianism spreads, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party should be expelled from its European parliament grouping

Boris Johnson should change his name and move to Hungary. “My policy on cake,” Johnson famously says, “is pro having it and pro eating it.” With this approach to Brexit, the British government will end up neither having its cake nor eating it. Viktor Orbán’s nationalist populist Hungarian government, by contrast, is triumphantly practising the Johnson doctrine. It receives more European Union cake per capita than any other member state while mustering nationalist support by biting the Brussels hand that feeds it. Boris Johnzsönhelyi would be a happy trooper on the Danube.

Increasingly, attention has turned to linking the money countries get from Brussels to respect for the rule of law

Related: Viktor Orbán: re-election of Hungary’s anti-immigrant leader is major challenge for EU

Friends in the centre-right parties say: “It’s still better to have Orbán inside because we can influence him there.'

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