It's hard to explain why the former dissidents made that decision (largely greed, I suppose), and the three terms of Socialist-SZDSZ rule were marked by dizzying sleaze and corruption (and the introduction of a new term to the Hungarian language: to "Nokia" someone, which means to provide them with a box for a Nokia handset stuffed with money).

The SZDSZ paid the price in the 2010 elections. They failed to get a single seat in parliament, and they will never get another seat in parliament (imagine going from government to oblivion, imagine what voters must think of you) and I'd bet good money that some of them will soon be behind bars.

This alignment of the SZDSZ and the ex-communists was particularly bad news for Orbán. The communists had 40 years of power, 40 years of travelling and working abroad, 40 years of making sure their children had the best education, spoke foreign languages, got the best jobs in foreign trade, in banking, in the diplomatic corps, in the universities. Thus they have many friends and acquaintances abroad who can (often unwittingly) seed their propaganda.

On top of that, the supporters of the SZDSZ tended to be the Budapest intelligentsia with good international contacts — journalists, academics, musicians, writers. They're not good losers. This other powerful segment of society which should have championed a democrat like Orbán (or at least respected him) spent its time instead spreading poison about Orbán abroad. The ex-communists and the SZDSZ have done a particularly good job in Germany and that's why so many were so quick to believe that Orbán was up to something shady (although if your chief detractor is the paedophile Daniel Cohn-Bendit you don't have too much to worry about).

The writer György Konrád, an intelligent, cultured man has been at the forefront of this. But let's remember that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, also an intelligent, cultured man and a gifted writer, believed in fairies at the bottom of the garden. Konrád sees fascists where there aren't any. In Fidesz.

In an interview with the French paper La Croix, Konrád, one of the founders of the SZDSZ, claims that Orban "always despised older people who had ideas." Konrád really gives it away here. Orban wasn't willing to kowtow to the SZDSZ in 1990 and to sit reverentially at the feet of Konrád and the other grandees of the SZDSZ and they can't get over it.

They can't get over the fact that they're not the philosopher-kings of Budapest, but virtually unknown has-beens. They can't get over Orbán being the only politician in Hungary to have genuine popularity (polls consistently show this), that Orbán has the ability to mix with all classes of society (unlike Konrád and his sociology-spouting Kant-translating colleagues).

Konrád's crew has gone kaput and there is nothing left for them but jealously, rage and spite. And if Konrád wants to play the intellectual card, it should be remembered that Orbán won a scholarship to Oxford (where his area of research was Solidarnosc, the opposition movement that actually achieved something).