Meet the brave, consensual mayor set to face down Hungary’s autocrat | Nick Cohen

The opposition parties are uniting behind an unlikely hero leading a broad popular front

Gergely Karacsony does not have the commanding features of a warrior who can fight Europe's authoritarian nationalists. The mayor of Budapest is 46, but his mild manner makes him look like an unassuming junior lecturer who could not take on a class of rowdy students, let alone Viktor Orban, Hungary's de facto dictator.

He doesn't shout or sloganise. He talks in a learned manner about how the European Union has fallen for a Fukuyaman delusion that democracy is irreversible while all the time providing cover for the dismantling of democracy in Poland and Hungary.