PM aide hopes for close UK links with Hungary

► A SENIOR aide to Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he hopes for a “special relationship” with Hungary after Brexit.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Danube Institute think tank, Tim Montgomerie said Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been criticised for using antisemitic tropes, had been home to “an awful lot of interesting early thinking on the limits of liberalism”.

“I think there will be very significant investment by Boris Johnson in relationships, particularly bilaterally, with key European states,” he told the event on December 17, which was recorded and posted online by the think tank.

“I think the French relationship will be significant, and I think this relationship with Budapest will be significant as well. Budapest and Hungary have been home, I think, for an awful lot of interesting early thinking on the limits of liberalism, and I think we are seeing that in the UK as well.

“So I hope there will be a special relationship with Hungary amongst other states.”

In Hungary’s 2017 parliamentary election, Mr Orbán’s government launched a campaign that featured posters depicting a grinning George Soros, the financier, with the slogan “Let’s not allow Soros to have the last laugh!”

Mr Orbán also once attacked Mr Soros in a speech, saying: “We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.”

Buzzfeed News, which first revealed Mr Montgomerie’s remarks, reported that they had not been signed off by Number 10 and it had yet to be decided whether Mr Montgomerie would return to his adviser role following the general election.

He became a social justice adviser to Mr Johnson in September.

A government spokesperson said: “All special advisers are expected to comply with the special adviser code. During the election all special advisers resigned their positions.