My problem with the retrospective lists of Fidesz's so-called welfare measures is that many items aren't what they are presented as, there is a lot of smoke and mirrors. Some of these:

• Politically speaking, the biggest own goal of the Horn government in the Bokros Package was the introduction of tuition fees: intended as a signal of an equal sharing of burdens, they drove the politically most active segment of society into Fidesz's arms. So the Orbán government's number one act to demonstrate a break with the prior policies was to abolish tuition fees. Well, not really: only the general tuition fee was abolished while special tuition fees were expanded greatly, and the effect on student income counterbalanced by a holding back of stipendium growth by inflation. (For full disclosure: I was a student throughout this time, including participation in the failed anti-Bokros-Package student protests.)

• The poor tend to have more children than the well-off. The right-wing solution is not to end poverty (because poverty is the poor people's own fault), but to provide incentives to the well-off and disincentive the not-so-well-off. This was achieved with a combination of income-independent family benefits at a frozen level (not following inflation), tax benefits for parents with income up to a limit (leaving out the truly well-off and the jobless), and the disproportional increase of the lowest income tax bracket.

• Another supposedly social measure was the provision of housing credits. This was a Thatcherite ownership society measure. While not directly aimed at the upper class, credits are certainly something aimed at the better-off, at the credit-worthy. In the particular case of the Orbán government's housing credits, there was the extra perversity that it was tailored for the children of the well-off, in requiring other homes as collateral. While not directly aimed at the upper class, credits also benefit the financial sphere (as I wrote earlier, this was one of the seeds of the currency crisis).

• In addition to the not-so-social measures remembered as social measures, there are the forgotten anti-social measures. For example, pensions were held under what a Horn-era law mandated, and Fidesz pioneered the idea of hospital privatisation (2001 attempt by Szeged's Fidesz major followed by the law named for then health minister István Mikola, which was thrown out in the first days of the Medgyessy government; though soon they would do a 180 degree turn and prepare their own version).

If the spending spree of the 2002 Socialists was in reaction to something from Fidesz, then not to Orbán's non-welfare welfare policies (which were obvious enough to anyone with a tighter bourse), but Fidesz warnings in the campaign that the Socialists will restore parts of the Bokros Package.

are really socialists, I would simply call them Party loyalists

I certainly don't disagree with your low opinion of Gyurcsány and the stupidity and low intellectual capital of his supporters, but I don't see a mutual exclusion here. People can be damn superficial even if ideologically committed, as demonstrated by the millions who sticked to Gyurcsány role model Bliar in successive elections despite the government breaking all 1997 election promises. (At least a lot of German Social Democrats split off the SPD and joined Left Party predecessor WASG when Schröder was into Agenda 2010 and Harz IV at the same time Medgyessy was implementing his spending promises.)

The Hungarian left have been poorly served by the MSZP and if Fidesz do dismantle it, this could actually be a positive thing in the medium term.

The MSzP can sure go to hell, but Fidesz will find a framing for demonisation against everyone, and for the Left, IMHO, Jobbik (which now took the role of the misappropiator of leftist rhetoric) and Fidesz are now greater problems than MSzP or even DK not just on the short term but the medium term too.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}