Viktor Orbán ousted after 16 years in power as Hungarian opposition wins election landslide

After 16 years, the Orbán experiment is over

What Viktor Orbán did for the last 16 years in power was an experiment - but even he didn’t know what to call it.

"Illiberal democracy" sounded too negative. His American friends liked to call it "national conservatism", which sounds better, but it was never strictly true, because unlike most conservatives, Orbán was a rebel, he constantly radicalised himself - so what could he conserve?

He portrayed himself as an "anti-globalist" but invited German car makers and Chinese and South Korean EV battery makers to Hungary.

He painted himself as the champion of national sovereignty, but refused to stand up for Ukrainian sovereignty against Russia.

He railed against immigration, but quietly encouraged immigration to build his new factories.

One year after winning a two-thirds majority in 2010, he wrote a new constitution, reshaping Hungary in his own image, to suit his own party.

He pushed through one law after another, to change the structure of the courts, the electoral system, and the economy.

But on Sunday, Hungarians decisively told him: "We don't want to be experimented on any longer."