For much of the last fifteen years, there’s been an assumption among British “elites” that something has gone “badly wrong” with Hungary – that it’s the Hungarians who are the “outliers,” the “freaks,” the people who are losing their moral compass.

But based on what Matt Goodwin witnessed and was asked at events last week, “I’m here to tell you that the opposite is true,” he said.

“It is not Hungary that has lost itself – it is Britain, it is England. We are the people who are losing our own country, and everybody else out there has noticed.”

What happened to me in Hungary

By Matt Goodwin

I’ve just returned to Britain from Hungary, where I spent a few days last week giving talks to students, politicians and members of the public.

Now, whenever you mention Hungary among a certain group in London – think SW1 Westminster, the BBC, Financial Times, Oxbridge – people tend to lose their minds.

“Hungary!?” they say, “you mean that rather odd country in Eastern Europe that’s very conservative and falling out with everybody in the European Union!?”

I first experienced this reaction last summer when, amid the Southport atrocities, I dared to point out that the country I was visiting and which Western elites like to criticise – a very stable, a very secure, and a very peaceful Hungary – looked utterly different to the country I was returning to and which those same elites preside over.

Because unlike Hungary, Britain was quite literally on fire.

Widespread rioting and protests after the Southport atrocity had become an unavoidable symbol of intense public concern about things that are only significant in Hungary because they are completely absent – mass uncontrolled immigration, broken borders, radical Islamism, Pakistani Muslim rape gangs and the murder of childrenby the descendants of recent immigrants.

Nonetheless, my mere suggestion that perhaps Hungary has got some things right that Britain has got badly wrong generated an incredibly hostile response from British elites, reflecting an arrogance and snobbishness that is rife among that class.

Indeed, for much of the last fifteen years, there’s been an assumption among elites in Britain that something has gone “badly wrong” with Hungary – that it’s the Hungarians who are the “outliers,” the “freaks,” the people who are losing their moral compass.

But based on what I witnessed and was asked at events last week, I’m here to tell you that the opposite is true. Because as far as many Hungarians are concerned, it is Britain, it is England, it is us, who got things badly wrong, who made a series of disastrous policy choices they are now determined to avoid, and who are, in the words of one person I encountered last week, “losing our country.”

The general mood I encountered was best symbolised by the questions I was asked when I had finished giving talks in different parts of the country on how, despite the vote for Brexit, a new era of mass immigration is now rapidly transforming Britain.

“Why are you letting all of these illegal migrants into your country?” asked one person. “Why has nobody in power gone to jail for the rape gangs?” asked another.

And then the questions just flooded in.

“Is it true Mohammed is now the most popular name for babies in your country?”

“Is it true your people are a minority in your capital?”

“I read that one million people in your country cannot speak English, is this true?”

“Why are you sending mothers to jail because of what they wrote on social media?”

“Why are Muslims campaigning at British elections about Gaza, not Britain?”

“Why are the British people accepting what they did not vote for?”

And then, speaking for many, a student at the back of the room simply stood up and asked: “What happened to you? I mean, what happened to your country?”

To be honest, I didn’t quite know what to say.

Because, to be frank, he had a point.

Sometimes, when you’re surrounded by endless chaos, when you’re surrounded by ongoing decline, and when you’re surrounded by the only thing you have come to know, you tend to lose all perspective.

You become desensitised. The abnormal becomes normal. The extreme becomes ordinary. The once unacceptable gradually slides into becoming acceptable.

It’s only when you step out of that box, walk away and look back over your shoulder that you recognise how truly insane things have become.

And that’s how I felt for much of last week.

Because unlike Hungarians – who despite endless criticism from “liberal” [left-wing] elites in Brussels, Westminster and the BBC are fiercely proud and protective of the things that are required to hold a nation-state together, including a shared sense of identity, culture, language and way of life – Britain, or more accurately the people running Britain, nowappear determined to destroy these things.

Over the last thirty years, as the Hungarians and many others in central and eastern Europe have clearly noticed, Britain’s elite class has basically done the opposite of what is needed to ensure that a nation-state remains united and, ultimately, survives.

They subjected people to an extreme policy of mass, uncontrolled immigration that almost nobody, excluding a radical elite minority, ever voted for and which reflects decades of broken promises in Westminster.

They did this while showing remarkably little – if any – interest in the question of how you might integrate a nation that is importing millions of people in just a few years, or whether it’s even possible to integrate such a nation.

Ever since Brexit, despite what they promised, they made all this even harder by reshaping immigration away from Europeans who, like the Hungarians and Poles, hold broadly similar cultural values to our own, in favour of importing enormous numbers of non-Europeans, many from Islamic nations, who have very different if not incompatible values to our own.

In fact, they reshaped our immigration policy to such an extent that close to 90% of all immigration in Britain now comes from outside Europe.

They pursued a state policy of multiculturalism that consistently prioritised and promoted differences between racial, ethnic and religious groups at the expense of focusing on what, if anything, is holding them together, allowing segregation, Islamist enclaves and sectarianism to become a feature of national life.

And when one leader after another began to openly acknowledge “multiculturalism has failed,” the elite class simply stopped trying – there was no replacement, there was not even an attempt to come up with some kind of alternative framework to how we might try and foster social cohesion.

Have you noticed – nobody in Westminster even talks about integration anymore while the question of whether it is even possible to integrate a nation experiencing this scale of demographic change is just ignored?

Read more: Yes. Multiculturalism is Failing, Matt Goodwin, 12 October 2023

At the same time, they allowed an anti-British, anti-Western woke ideology to hijack our taxpayer-funded, public institutions – schools, universities, museums, galleries, legacy media, the BBC – and cultivate a culture in which “refugee week” is considered more important in our schools, galleries and museums than Easter, and where our identity, culture and history are denigrated rather than celebrated.

In sharp contrast to Hungary, British elites have also consistently refused to engage seriously with our collapsing birth rate and the question of how we might, as a people, reproduce ourselves in the face of a looming demographic catastrophe.

They laugh or criticise those who discuss family policy as “far right extremists,” reflecting just how extreme the elite class has become, while ignoring how countries like Hungary are pursuing some of the most ambitious pro-family policies on Earth.

Read more: Britain’s looming demographic crisis, Matt Goodwin, 4 July 2024

They embraced an economic model of hyper-globalisation that put London and financial services on steroids while selling off almost all our national assets and replacing our unique culture with a bland, vacuous globalism in which the only thing we are allowed to celebrate is the post-national and meaningless theme of “diversity” while failing to acknowledge that if welcoming others is the only basis of our identity then it is tantamount to saying we have no real identity of our own.

And, on top of all that, the elite class then imposed tightly-controlled social norms, speech codes and taboos on society, which made even discussing many of these problems politically impossible and socially unacceptable, which in turn allowed the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs and Islamists to operate with impunity.

A stifling regime of political correctness, online censorship, hate laws, “speech crimes” and “non-crime hate incidents” has been ushered in, which Hungarians only recognise because of their traumatic experience with the Orwellian Soviet Union.

Read more: Matt discusses UK free speech crisis with top expert Michael Shellenberger, Matt Goodwin, 31 March 2025

And now, as if all that wasn’t enough, those same elites are now rapidly allowing a public perception of “two-tier Britain” – openly biased legal, judicial, political, media, and cultural systems that routinely prioritise minority groups over the white British majority – to become deeply entrenched and widespread.

Few things are more dangerous than subjecting a people to mass immigration, broken borders, zero integration and a failing economy while simultaneously telling them they should be ashamed of who they are and forcing them to watch the state favour some groups over others. This is not a path toward unity; it is a path toward conflict.

This is why Hungarians, as I learned this week, are now talking openly about Britain providing a masterclass in what notto do. This is why they are investing in securing their own borders, culture and identity, refusing to bow to the European Union.

Hungary did not just throw off the shackles of authoritarianism in Russia to have a new progressive authoritarianism imposed on them from above, by Brussels.

Whether all this will work over the long-term remains to be seen. But during my trip, one key point became unavoidable.

While British elites might comfort themselves by telling each other that Hungary is a country that got things badly wrong and is heading in the wrong direction, they have, once again, failed to read the room.

Because as far as Hungarians and a rapidly rising number of other people around the world are now concerned, from Budapest to Washington, it is not Hungary that has lost itself – it is Britain, it is England. We are the people who are losing our own country, and everybody else out there has noticed.

About the Author

Matthew Goodwin is a British political scientist and commentator known for his research on populism and right-wing movements. He was a professor of politics at the University of Kent until July 2024.

Goodwin has authored several books, including ‘Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics’ and ‘National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy’ (co-authored with Roger Eatwell), and ‘Revolt on the Right: Explaining Support for the Radical Right in Britain’ (co-authored with Robert Ford).

You can follow him on Substack, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter/X and Facebook.

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