Snaking for 110 miles across bleak, flat countryside is the barbed wire fence that Hungary built to keep out migrants. Designed to rip apart the flesh of humans who try to climb it, this monstrous edifice has stopped more than a million strangers illegally entering Europe over the past ten years.

The fence is hated by the European Union’s bureaucrats in Brussels who refused to export to Hungary the steel spikes needed to help build it at the start of the migration crisis in 2015.

So, acting fast, the rebellious former Communist nation – which lies on a key transit route for Middle-Eastern refugees and economic opportunists crossing into western Europe via Serbia – defiantly built a factory to make its own.

Once the wall was in place, the rate of migration plunged by an extraordinary 95 per cent or more – from roughly 400,000 in 2015 to fewer than 18,000 by 2016. Today, the yearly tally is a trickle of less than 30, suggesting asylum seekers have given up on Hungary.

The now world-famous barrier, built in part by the hands of Hungary’s criminals as part of prison labour, is the pride and joy of the country’s prime minister Viktor Orban. 

In the run-up to crucial elections today, he declared: ‘Only we built a fence. Only we said no to Brussels. Only we stopped mass migration. Our people decide who enters, our culture, our future.’

In cold drizzling rain last week, I stood beside the border fence, a two-hour drive from capital Budapest. Stern-looking armed guards drove patrol cars up and down a track beside it.

A white truck turned up, with workers unloading shiny new coils of spiked wire to mend holes through which a migrant on the Serbian side might try his luck to slip into the EU.

One border guard, Nadai Zoltan, later told a TV crew how the few who manage to breach the fence are treated. ‘It is impossible here to give an illegal migrant a hotel room as you do in Britain.

‘We take them immediately to the border gate at the fence and tell them to leave.

‘At the peak of the invasion, they became aggressive. They attacked border guards with stones. On the other side in Serbia, the guards there have found migrants with guns shooting at them.’

What happens if a migrant refuses to leave Hungarian soil?

‘They don’t say no,’ another border guard explained.

The truth is they have no choice, faced as they are with Hungarian guards who push them back and force them to walk of their own accord into the hinterland leading directly to Serbia.

The fence cost millions of euros to build. It is electrified – a touch with so much as a toe on the Serbian side sparks a loudspeaker announcement in English to ‘go away’. 

Any migrant who loiters near it soon finds a fleet of trucks carrying Hungarian guards arriving to chase him away from the border fence.

It seems Hungary has found a simple way to solve the problem cursing the rest of Europe.

For his defiance against Brussels in building the barrier, Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz Party of Christian nationalists are paying a price.

The European Union fines Hungary one million euros – or £870,000 – a day as a penalty for turning back illegals and refusing to offer them asylum. Orban also refuses Brussels’ demand that Hungary takes a share of so-called asylum seekers entering the bloc elsewhere each year. The result is that EU-Hungary relations are at an all-time low.

This weekend, crucial elections could end Orban’s 16 years in power. It is a two-horse race between his ruling hard-Right party, and the upstart Tisza party run by former Orban devotee Peter Magyar, who has defected and now been labelled a puppet of Brussels. 

Few outside Hungary had even heard of the middle-ranking civil servant Magyar until 2023, when he broke ranks, unleashing a blistering attack upon the Orban government.

The onslaught included the release of a tape-recording of Magyar’s ex-wife in conversation, when she was justice minister, alleging corruption among officials and ministers.

In an astonishing surge, Magyar has come from nowhere to lead in the polls ahead of the election – one recent poll had his party seven points ahead, although others suggest Orban’s party has rallied in recent days.

Making hay out of the corruption allegations, Magyar has galvanised disillusioned voters across the political spectrum through his social media and on-the-ground speeches, turning the fledgling Tisza movement into a vehicle that could well end Orban’s rule – as well as Hungary’s hostility towards the EU.

Magyar has built up an image of a tough, masculine leader, posing, for example, in a Facebook post wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the phrase ‘The Man’.

He has doubled down on campaigning, visiting six cities a day in the past fortnight, in an attempt to break through the tight control Orban maintains on much of the country’s media.

‘There’s no doubt there is significant support behind Tisza,’ admits András Cser-Palkovics, the mayor of Szekesfehervar in central Hungary who is a member of Orban’s Fidesz Party and considered one of the party’s few independent voices. ‘I think that this race is going to be a very tight one.’

A Tisza victory would destroy Orban’s powerbase, bring the country closer to Brussels and make it more hostile to Putin’s Russia, which Orban counts as an ally.

The true – and alarming – extent of that alliance may have been uncovered only last week by Bloomberg News, which claimed to have obtained a Hungarian government transcript of a call that took place between Orban and Putin just last October.

Orban reportedly compared their relationship to that of a ‘mouse’ standing ready to help the Russian ‘lion’ as needed.

‘Yesterday our friendship rose to such a high level that I can help in any way,’ Orban reportedly told Putin in the call. ‘In any matter where I can be of assistance, I am at your service.’

Critics have described Orban as Putin’s ‘Trojan horse’, suggesting that he’s happy to assist the Russian leader in destabilising western Europe and the EU. This, however, did not prevent the US Vice President JD Vance endorsing Orban in a flying visit to Hungary last week – as we shall see.

Orban has openly sought to turn Hungary in to what he calls an ‘illiberal democracy’. And Magyar has played on this during the campaign, calling his government corrupt and authoritarian. The Berlin-based Transparency International Secretariat earlier declared Hungary the most corrupt country in the EU.

Yet the challenger claims to align with Orban on migration controls and on putting Hungarian families first. So will the upstart gain support from other parties?

‘We are not going to actually get into bed with Magyar,’ one Hungarian opposition politician said recently. ‘It’s just, you know, we need somebody to put Orban behind us. This is the first chance.’

‘We are not voting for Tisza, we are voting against Fidesz,’ added a member of the Hungarian parliament from the Green Party who has stepped down to clear the way for a Magyar candidate.

‘Hungarians would vote for a goat at this point if it was running against Orban.’ On the ground meanwhile, I found voters in a state of deep indecision, whatever the polls tell us.

One 38-year-old truck driver and father of three whom I chatted to at a cafe with pretty awnings, on a squeakily clean Budapest street, summed up their dilemma.

‘We like Mr Orban’s policies on protecting our family life, the tax breaks for mothers which encourage more births. But the rumours of corruption scandals are the continual problem with his Government. I have always voted for Orban, but this time it will be his rival Peter Magyar.’

Last week Vance rode into town to support the Orban campaign. He extended his two-day stay by 24 hours to take in the magnificent sights of Budapest.

On arrival Vance warned against any interference by the EU in the election. His intervention triggered a three per cent drop in the polls for Orban’s party, according to claims on political sites. However, not all may be what it seems.

President Donald Trump made a surprise phone call during one of Vance’s speeches in Hungary.

As soon as the audience of thousands heard Trump’s unmistakable voice over the line, they erupted into deafening cheers of support for Orban.

JD Vance greeted Trump’s call with a big smile, saying ‘Mr President, how are you?’ Trump replied with a simple ‘Hi!’ — and that alone sent the entire room into pandemonium.

Vance then told Trump he was speaking live to about 5,000 Hungarian patriots, joking, ‘I think they love you more than they love Viktor Orban!’

Trump jumped right in with strong praise for Hungary’s leadership: ‘Viktor didn’t allow people to storm in and invade your country like other people have.'

Ironically, Hungary’s election comes amid growing support for EU leaders who secure their borders, put their own citizens first, and refuse to bow to asylum seekers’ insatiable demands.

Orban, whatever his faults, has devoted his life and politics to Hungary. Hungarians do not suffer from grooming scandals associated with Pakistani-heritage rape gangs here, the streets are clean, and girls can safely walk to meet friends in the evening.

Budapest is a fun and safe city to live in or visit.

If he is wrenched from power, it will be just as other European countries are turning to Orban’s anti-immigration style of government. Right-wing parties such as National Rally and AFD top the polls in France and Germany as their people resist uncontrolled borders, mass inward migration, and the soaring birth rates of foreign newcomers.

This presents voters with a serious dilemma. If a coup takes place at the ballot box today and Magyar wins, the country’s family-friendly policies are predicted to remain in place which will be popular.

But whatever his party’s claims about being anti-immigration, the reset in Hungary-EU relations that Magyar is determined to introduce will mean the country’s firm control over its borders could be reversed and the barbed-wire fence at the southern borders may go. If so, asylum seekers will jump into action, pouring in from Serbia and the rest of the Balkans.

‘We are worried that Hungary will become a vassal state of Brussels like all the other EU nations,’ a lady in her 70s coming out of a splendid Budapest church told me. ‘We leave our keys in the door, crime is low, we feel safe. Why would we want to alter that by letting in everyone who wants to live here?’ Yes, the winds of change appear to be happening.

If Orban wins, there is talk of his Government attempting to loosen links, even split, with the EU. If he is thrown out, Hungary’s brave stand against Brussels will be over. Whatever happens, today’s vote is a pivotal moment.

But as to what the outcome will actually be, it is a question that no one seems able to answer.