“What I admire most in Viktor Orban,” says his loyal champion, the journalist Andras Bencsik, “is his ability to predict the future.” Bencsik compares him to a chess grandmaster who can see 25 moves in advance. Viktor Orban has promised “a settling of accounts” after the election with those who mocked, criticised, or tried to undermine his rule. “Political, moral and legal” retribution will follow, he told a rally of 100,000 supporters.

Every Wednesday, Viktor Orban holds a cabinet meeting. Thursday is his reading day. The Israeli author Yuval Noah Hariri’s Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind is a recent favourite. Target Hungary by the British-based sociologist Frank Furedi is another. Boston Politics, by Thilo Schabert, a third. Natural Right and History, by the German Jewish emigre Leo Strauss, whose thinking strongly influenced a generation of Republican politicians in the US, is the latest addition to his coffee table. What the books have in common is a pessimism about the future of Western liberal civilisation, and a fondness for strong leaders, rather than strong institutions. “Orban concentrates harder than he used to, he’s not as jovial, as easy going as he was,” says Bencsik. “Those who call him ‘Machiavellian’ are mistaking that ability to concentrate, for something else.”

Budapest is a small city, and almost every year I bump into the prime minister, purely by accident. I was sitting in a cafe on Normafa, a popular hill overlooking Budapest, when Orban walked in without a bodyguard, looking for a table. I greeted him and he replied: “Hello Nick. Are you still alive?” Not the friendliest greeting, but I let it pass. We shook hands. His handshake is no longer firm, I noticed. In just the past four years he has put on a lot of weight. I asked him about Hodmezovasarhely, where a recent by-election saw an independent candidate defeat the Fidesz favourite by gathering the entire anti-Fidesz vote behind him. “It will certainly change the dynamic of the campaign,” he admitted. But to the surprise of even his supporters, the Fidesz campaign focused on the “threat of migration”, instead of the economic achievements of his government. Orban appeared rattled.

March 2018: Opposition activists at an election rally for the Socialist Party (MSZP)