India, April 17 -- A week ago, US vice-president JD Vance travelled to Hungary to rally Viktor Orban's supporters, an appearance that included his dialling President Donald Trump, who delivered laudatory remarks over speakerphone. This striking intervention in European politics was quickly overshadowed by intense media coverage of the vice-president's visit to Pakistan. But the scale of Orban's subsequent defeat, with his opponent Peter Magyar winning a supermajority, has turned the spotlight back on Vance's visit to Budapest.

The ensuing commentary has focused on the electoral outcome, which critics have been keen to portray as a decisive repudiation of the "populist nationalism" championed by Orban and Trump. But what we really ought t...