Last weekend, Hungary voted out Viktor Orbán and emerged, blinking, into the light after 16 years of living in what Orbán had branded an “illiberal democracy”. It was a credo shaped by the country’s seemingly forever leader, who was backed by Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and other Western hard-right figures.

Orbán’s vanquisher Péter Magyar – previously a loyalist, now centre right – does not have an unblemished personal or political record. As a lawyer called Ágnes told the BBC: “He’s someone you cannot be absolutely sure of, but we’re at a point where we need to hope for something better, which he promises – and we truly hope his promises come true.”

We hoped for that too when we elected Labour. Look what we got. While Hungarians were celebrating their liberation, Met police were swarming Trafalgar Square intimidating peaceful protesters who’d gathered to show support for Palestine Action and victims of the Middle Eastern wars.

Palestine Action was proscribed by the Home Office in July 2025. This February, a High Court ruled the ban unlawful. An appeal is pending. In the interregnum, the police stormed in and arrested 523 people aged between 18 and 87. Some were in wheelchairs, others elderly and disabled. They came because they cared about human rights and lives. They came because they believe that Britain is still democratic and basically liberal.

The two stories unfolded at almost the same time, like screen epics on the caprices of democracy. Only this was real. Unnervingly so, for Britons.

What happened to Labour’s liberal and just soul? Roy Jenkins, home secretary in the early 70s, gave us the equality laws; Gordon Brown has been a valiant upholder of international laws and universal human rights; Harriet Harman, a feminist, is an exemplary modern politician who has held on to liberal values in the face of populism.

Now we have a Labour Government which is increasingly authoritarian and oppressive. David Lammy snatches the right to jury trails. Geoffrey Robertson KC, founder of Keir Starmer’s former barristers’ chambers has this week, in a 31-page polemic on the Bar Council website, described the policy as a “betrayal” of Labour values and our heritage. One insider in this Government’s early months tells me such interventions “just make them laugh – they don’t listen”.

Look to Shabana Mahmood, harder on migrants than any recent home secretary. She promised that her dehumanising decision to make most migrants wait 10 years rather than five to qualify for settled status would save £10bn over 10 years. The Government’s own data now shows it will be 6 per cent of that figure.

Like she cares. She’s on a roll, loved by the right. Michael Gove admits to having a crush on her. Brill, she must think.

Starmer is even more populist than she is on immigrants. Or pretends he is. I remember him accusing Rishi Sunak of being “the most liberal prime minister we’ve ever had on immigration”. In February 2025, he, a former director of public prosecutions, and Kemi Badenoch attacked a judge in Parliament for allowing a Palestinian family to settle in Britain though they had originally applied via a system reserved for Ukrainian asylum seekers. Our most senior judge Lady Chief Justice Baroness Sue Carr found the politicians’ remarks “unacceptable” and reminded them that they were duty-bound to uphold the rule of law and respect the independence of judges.

Another indictment. Last week, 32 British diplomats wrote a letter to The Guardian expressing grave concern about the way Israel is grabbing land in the West Bank, which would “destroy Palestine’s viability”.

Israel broke the fragile peace in the Middle East and roped the US into its war in Iran, and now it is bombarding Lebanon. How many Labour ministers have resigned from the cosy Friends of Israel club? Have you heard Starmer resoundingly condemning Israel’s alleged detention and torture of detainees, some children, one of whom was revealed last week to have likely been starved to death? No, me neither.

In his novel Herzog, a meditation on middle-age disappointments, the American novelist Saul Bellow wrote: “In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don’t mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek power. While in the parlours of indignation, the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil.” In Starmer’s Britain, millions of thinking citizens are bringing their hearts to a boil.

Labour might think its turn to the right will save it from Reform UK, but the fervency of the protests of last weekend show it is writing its own suicide note. People up and down the country who once saw the party as their natural home are now repelled by it.

Many of those thinking citizens will use their votes to protest against his Government’s perfidious abandonment of progressive principles, its carelessness and haughtiness, its march towards illiberalism. The May elections just got more perilous for our obdurate PM and his trusty Cabinet lieutenants.

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