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Former United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in Dallas to make the case for continued US assistance to Ukraine to a heavily Republican crowd Monday.
“I just urge you all to stick with it. It will pay off massively in the long run,” he said, correctly.
Johnson’s speech contrasted not only with the views of the GOP’s two presidential frontrunners, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, but with those of Viktor Orbán.
The Hungarian prime minister has become a model of the new right-wing politics, which breaks with the traditional conservatism of Reagan and Thatcher, never mind the squishy center-right politics of Europe’s large Christian-Democratic parties.
Yet Johnson’s sentiments on Ukraine and Russia are much more representative of Europe’s insurgent, populist right than those of Orbán — notwithstanding the outsized role the latter plays in the conservative imagination in the United States, thanks to his connections with Tucker Carlson and the Hungarian government’s massive investment into conservative outreach in America through fellowships, study programs and hosting the CPAC conference in Budapest.
On Ukraine, Orbán has become an increasingly isolated actor, straining ties with his previous political allies across the continent by refusing any steps to counter Russian aggression.
For years, Poland’s governing Law and Justice party (PiS) — equally opposed to immigration and even featuring a sizable contingent of Catholic integralists — was seen as a mirror image of Orbán’s Fidesz party.
A decade ago, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński even vowed to “build Budapest in Warsaw.
