Out of government, Mr Orban was regarded by political analysts as a populist, to the extent that in 2007 the UK's Economist awarded both him and then PM Ferenc Gyurcsany its "politics of the gutter award" citing his "cynical populism and mystifyingly authoritarian socialist-style policies".
[WS:] It is a "microcosm" case of what happened to the Left, at least in Eastern Europe. It became infatuated with neoliberalism ceding its traditional ground to nationalist, right-leaning populists like Orban in Hungary, Kaczynski in Poland and Putin in Russia.
Wojtek