The Leader Of The CPAC
Weekly briefings on the life of The New European Capital of Conservatism.
Events This Week
The CPAC is a little-known place where we can get together. Last year was a two day affair, mid-week. This year is much more of a one-and-done job: a single day, 21 March — and a Saturday to boot. Expect Fox News-tier jawlines, Matt Gaetz-tier hairgel, much brimstone on Iran, and plenty of reverend references to the speaker’s relationship with The Man Upstairs (DJT).
Also at CPAC, hanging out the passenger’s side of his best friend’s ride, is Dave Rubin — who will be interviewing Dutch firecracker Eva Vlaardingerbroek (the only influencer whose name is an anagram of everything). Eva has recently been banned from the United Kingdom for being ‘un-conducive to the public good’. Test whether she is conducive to your own good, at the Danube Institute, 5:30PM, Friday night.
Emma Gilland wants you to have your babies. She’s the Event Coordinator of the Academy of Ideas, in town at MCC to present her findings on Gen Z, motherhood and family formation in Britain. It makes for typically grim reading: the rising generation see motherhood as a stressful time-suck in an economically precarious world. This one’s a matinée - 2PM Tuesday.
Connor Tomlinson is back at MCC to advise potential conservative influencers on how to make their way in the digital world. Wednesday, 7PM
Is your week creaking at the seams yet? Got time for a wafer-thin roadshow? Just the one? The Free Market Roadshow has been rolling into Budapest with the regularity of Russian tanks — this year is its 20th edition, co-hosted with Austrian Economic Center. 2026's key topics include: “The Beauty of the Free Market” “Is the West in Civilisational Decline?” - with the excellent Max Rangeley. “Is there an AI Bubble?” - by Edward Chancellor. “Is the West in Financial Decline?” And “Can Free Markets Save the West?” - with the prodigal Lord, David Frost — back in Budapest after six months running the free market IEA think tank. So good that, as Hayek might’ve put it: were there not already a Free Market Roadshow, the inherent demand for it would create the profit incentives to marshal the resources to bring one into being. Thursday, 2-6PM. Danube Institute.
Around Town
Perspectives and people from the week
Oxford is a town with no mobile phone signal. Delegates to the DI’s Pusey House Christian Revival conference were left dangling their rectangles at the sky, imploring the gods of the ether to send them just one bar so that they could find just one more bar.
Initially we assumed this was to do with Hungarian roaming, until various locals confirmed the grim truth: yes, Oxford has precious little 5G, 4G or even 1G. Some blamed the sandstone buildings (scientifically illiterate). Others, the town planners. But as a city with perhaps the highest ‘g’ ('General Intelligence’) on the planet, it did seem darkly funny that all this intellect was being frittered away on waiting for the bus timetable to load.
Spotted above the basin in the bathrooms of Pusey House: “To clean hands, chant verses from Psalm 51.”
Mary Harrington gave the most bracing speech — a McLuhan-inflected overview of literacy and its discontents. The print era, she suggested, was only an interregnum, a brief five hundred year gap between two oral cultures: that of antiquity, and the coming one, where AI spoons us back to ourselves in a soothing baritone. What’s coming will be two types of human: a possibly-elite, certainly-minority class of those who can and do read; and then a great mass of those who don’t find it necessary. One possible solution? “Bring back the monasteries…” Repositories of deep culture in a world of shallows. Full text here.
John O'Sullivan, asked onstage what could bring about Christian Revival: "Reading GK Chesterton - it worked for Meloni. Oh - and a Near-Death Experience always helps..."Maurice Glasman onstage: "Please, quit with the applause. I'm in the Labour Party, I'm not used to it."Economist, gadfly and Colour Revolution hater Philip Pilkington is pointing to a gathering storm as the Hungarian election season quickens. Recent reports in the VSquare journal, have alleged a Kremlin-linked plot to influence the Hungarian election on behalf of Fidesz. The article cites anonymous intelligence; Pilkington has spent much of the week challenging VSquare to reveal its sources. No reply so far. At the same time, he points to a growing row over AI-generated deepfakes. That story was started by a Hungarian fact-checking outlet called Lakmusz. Lakmusz forms part of the EU-financed Hungarian Digital Media Observatory. For its part, VSquare is funded by programmes connected to USAID and the German Marshall Fund. Pilko’s verdict? The ground is being laid for a post-election cry of foul — see Romania in 2025 for how that works. Read his full analysis here.
Sean Nottoli was once a USAID-er: in the employ of the National Endowment for Democracy, via its International Republican Institute arm. Now a Fellow at the DI, he’s a poacher turned gamekeeper — or at least poacher turned different kind of poacher. In this week’s Danube Politics, he gives us the lowdown on what life was like inside the world’s biggest donor org.
It's St Paddy's Day, Tuesday. The best Irish pub in Budapest, by common consent, is the James Joyce, just behind the Basilica.
Tune in for some Shahed-level penetration of the discourse in the new View From The Danube. Rod Dreher was so sick with mono had to pretend to eat fish soup for the intro (he couldn’t stomach a single spoon). Then, Raymond Ibrahim explained exactly why Shia Islam is so much more Doomsday-oriented than Sunni — and why that means Iran must never be allowed near the plutonium jar.
Paper of the Week
Brösel-Politiken: Is Democracy Working in the UK and across Europe?
The populists keep winning. This we know. Yet their victories still catch out mainstream analysts almost every time. That may be because mainstream analysts are measuring the wrong things, says Stephen Balogh. In fact, democratic disenchantment is more real than we'd ever imagine. In a hefty piece of high-end political theory, he contrasts his measurement approach to that of The Economist's Intelligence Unit (EIU). The EIU's five ‘deficits’ (equality, party, choice, ideas, citizenship) work for atomised individual. But, he says, they neglect a nationality-based demos: emphasising high-trust cohesion and demographic sustainability. "How can we be happy with our politics if it lacks a polity?", to put it one way.
Serious consideration should be given to creation of a new democratic deficit category under the EIU democratic deficit scheme, dubbed ‘National Interest deficit’. Necessarily different in nature to the existing five in that it would aim to reflect a sense of democratic collective identity as the demos of the nation rather than purely in terms of atomized individuals, its measurement would increase the explanatory value of the EIU scheme. For completeness, the full revised list would be: A. Equality Deficit B. Party Deficit C. Choice Deficit D. Ideas Deficit E. Citizenship Deficit F. National Interest Deficit
Dates For Your Diary
Family Formation and the Future, Budapest — 1–2 April
NatCon Brussels — April"Halvány lila gőzöm nincs"
— I have not the faintest purple vapour about it. (I have absolutely no idea)