The Times reports that Reform, rarely a party to thoughtfully come up with their own ideas, have been actively seeking advice from none other that Viktor Orban, the extremely illiberal prime minister Hungary.
On a recent trip to Budapest, Reform officials sought advice from aides to Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, on welfare policy…
Orban’s welfare policies have been described as “a social catastrophe” for Hungary – they do little to actually help the people that most need assistance.
They make poor people poorer.
Severe austerity measures were implemented with respect to both the availability and level of social benefits, which has led to a significant decline in the poverty-reduction effect of cash transfers. Eligibility for disability benefits has been severely restricted and tens of thousands of former beneficiaries have partially or entirely lost this support—frequently in unfair revaluations—and approximately half a million long-term jobless citizens do not receive any social benefits at all. The incomes of those living in deep poverty were further decreased by setting the wages paid in the ever-more-extensive workfare programmes below the statutory minimum wage.
They are anti-worker, favouring fat cat bosses.
Changes in labour law has—by intensifying the insecurity of wage labourers—further increased the power inequality between capital and labour, whereas the curtailment of the right to strike and the abolition of tripartite negotiations will ensure that this predicament persists. Government employees in particular, including teachers, have good reason to fear arbitrary dismissal as retaliation for expressing their political discontent.
Their policies to help parents are aimed at those that are already reasonably wealthy:
The government’s family policy favours the more well-to-do through generous tax benefits which are inaccessible to poorer families, while the real value of universal family assistance has been continuously decreasing
Overall, increasing inequality:
Hungary’s family policies have been designed to only benefit certain kinds of Hungarians….access seems to only be limited to citizens who are already well off in Hungarian society. One of Hungary’s own demographers has stated that that “scheme targets the most affluent people and increases inequality, which is probably a world first among such programs” and has created a “perverse redistribution.”[
And are only in any case accessible to people who fit Orban’s ideal of the perfect family.
Hungary’s family policies explicitly bar certain Hungarians from participating. Unmarried and divorced mothers cannot access many of the subsidies. Further, LGBT Hungarians are also barred from receiving benefits, leaving out potentially hundreds of thousands of Hungarians.
Being seemingly based on an idiotic conspiracy theory:
Orban has explicitly framed his family policies as a possible solution to the great replacement conspiracy theory – a theory purporting that global elites are seeking to replace white westerners with black and brown immigrants
They promote inequality between the sexes:
The government (which was formed in 2010 exclusively by men) frequently frames family policies with an explicit affirmation of segregated, unequal gender roles, where women are caregivers and men are breadwinners.
And are prejudicial against LGBT people:
In 2020, the country amended its constitution to exclude same sex couples from the definition of “family.”
They help those with higher incomes get housing:
Housing policy in Hungary has long been biased toward those with higher incomes, with disproportionately low public expenditures in support of low-income housing. However, the government has recently decided to discontinue all state responsibility for the provision of housing assistance.
Perhaps we should not be all that surprised that Reform are enchanted by Hungary’s welfare system given the manifold evidence that Reform, despite all their “man of the people” schtick, actually wants to go out of its way to help the super rich get richer at the expense of the poor; that they promote anti-worker policies, and are run by Nigel Farage – someone who appears to have real admiration for Orban’s anti-democratic, anti-civil rights, nationalist and autocratic regime.
Farage of course appeared at the same sort of conferences that Orban attends and promotes a similarly dangerous, pretty insane, conspiracy theory to his audience. Memorably, Farage said that:
The biggest threat we face is the fifth column in all our countries that is attempting to destroy the family unit, Judeo-Christian Culture
Our children are being indoctrinated. Our universities have become madrassas of Marxism, and it needs to change,”
Already it seems like Reform’s opportunistic but morally correct claim that they’d abandon the two child benefit cap might well come with some serious limitations. From their chats with Orban’s administration, Reform are apparently:
…enthused by one of their suggestions: lifting the two-child benefit cap only for working mothers.