“There aren’t many choices. There aren’t, because we f-cked up. Not a little, a lot. There is no other country … that has shown such stupidity as we have.”

“Obviously we lied throughout the past one and a half, two years. It was completely obvious that what we said was not true.”

“Meanwhile, we have done nothing for four years. You cannot tell me of any significant government measure we could be proud of… If we need to give an account to the country what we have done for four years, what will we say?”

“I almost died of having to pretend for the past year that we were actually governing. Instead we lied day, night and evening. I don’t want to do this any more. Either we go ahead and then you have a leader or you have to pick somebody else.”

“Reform means a willingness to re-evaluate all that we have thought and done so far on an array of points.”

“What would happen if instead of losing our popularity because of bullsh-tting among ourselves, we lost it because we promoted great social causes? In that case it is not a problem if we lose the support of society for a while.”

No, it was not an Australian political leader commenting on an election campaign. They are extracts from the secretly recorded speech given by the Hungarian Prime Minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, to members of his Socialist Party in May.

The speech was broadcast on Hungarian radio on Sunday, prompting calls for his resignation and rioting in Budapest. The extracts are in chronological order and have been translated by Reuters from a transcript on Mr Gyurcsany’s personal weblog and reported in the London Times.