India, April 14 -- When American far-Right ideologue and former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon called Hungary's Viktor Orban "Trump before Trump", it was to evoke Orban's success in drawing popular support as a deeply conservative, authoritarian leader of a European nation. That popular support ran out on Sunday, after 16 years in office. Orban's party, Fidesz, suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the centre-Right Tisza - despite the regime redrawing constituencies to favour Fidesz, changing election laws to make electoral competition difficult for opposition parties, clamping down on independent media, and appointing allies to key posts and making it procedurally harder to remove them. The electorate's disenchantment had become apparent in surveys ahead of the elections. With little to offer in terms of course-correction here, the Orban regime relied on blatant polarisation - on immigration (though doors remained open for highly skilled immigrants), on LGBTQ identities and orientation, on neighbouring nations and the idea of European integration. There was also ringing support from authoritarians and demagogues across the spectrum, including Trump, France's Marine Le Pen, Italy's Giorgia Meloni, and Russia's Vladimir Putin. Irrespective of whether Orban's loss proves a bellwether for far-Right politics and authoritarians elsewhere, what is clear is that there is an end of the road for right-wing populism - just as there is for other variants of populism. Orban's loss is a strong rebuke to the politics of hate and division mongering and to those who make it the defining flavour of their politics, at least in the context of Central Europe....