Daniel Dalton, Amjad Bashir, Emma McClarkin, Geoffrey Van Orden and Ashley Fox are not exactly major figures in British politics. Daniel Hannan’s lofty Whiggish pronouncements on democracy and freedom make him a little better known. All of the above are Conservative members of the European parliament and all of them, in addition to a further nine of their colleagues, disgraced their party on Wednesday by voting against the European parliament’s motion to censure the Hungarian government of Viktor Orban.

Mr Orban’s government stands in defiance of the rule of law and respect for human rights, the values that the European Union advertises as its philosophy. The prime minister of Hungary has made it a criminal offence for lawyers to help asylum seekers. Critical judges have