All hail Viktor Orbán, the hero Europe needs!

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.

Hello and welcome to the first meeting of the Marxist Convict Party! No, wait, it’s the Put Compassion First Party! Or maybe the Old-Fashioned Independent Party!

Those were the first three suggestions that came out when your author used a political party random name generator.

Names are so important. Why European Politics Is So Damn Frustrating (Part 754) is the often confusing names used: I’m looking at you, European People’s Party (the party) and European People’s Party (the group).

So thank goodness for Hungary’s Viktor Orbán (yeah, I actually wrote that down) who is great at naming things. First, and as already discussed in this column, he broke the time-honored tradition of awful Council of the European Union presidency slogans by coming up with “Make Europe Great Again” and then he launched a new faction in the European Parliament and called it Patriots of Europe.

You know where you stand with a name like Patriots of Europe (ideally, as far away as possible!). It’s going to be right-wing, anti-immigration and wearing an ill-fitting gray suit. In fact, looking at the launch photos featuring Orbán, the Czech Republic’s Andrej Babiš and Austria’s Herbert Kickl, it wasn’t clear if this was the start of a political movement or the reformation of a punk band that used to be cool but now posts YouTube videos claiming that the pandemic was a hoax and that Ursula von der Leyen is actually Hillary Clinton.

Alas, André Ventura of Portugal’s Chega party, which wants to sign up for Patriots of Europe, looks rather younger than the other three (all hail the Mediterranean diet!). So he must be the new member, who replaced the original drummer who won’t join the reunion because he runs an alpaca farm in Friesland (or something along those lines).

“European people want three things,” Orbán said at the launch of his new movement: “Peace, order and development.” He contrasted that with “what they get from the current Brussels elite,” which he said was “war, migration and stagnation.” Now, in the world of writing, we call that the rule of three as listing things in threes kinda looks nice. (Unless it’s European People’s Party, for the reasons outlined above).

And then — fresh from, er, saving Europe — Orbán headed off on a surprise visit to Ukraine. Hopefully it was just a surprise to the press and not to Volodymyr Zelenskyy! Imagine waking up after another restful night’s sleep and then hearing the sound of Russian shells falling to discover Viktor Orbán is at your door, wearing a MEGA hat and a Patriots of Europe T-shirt. “Hey, Volodymyr! Great to see you. Let’s end this war now; I’ve got Vladimir on speed dial.”

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“Hey, you! How would you like to be the Democratic nominee for president?”

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Paul Dallison is POLITICO’s deputy EU editor.