'Labour's failing to show interest!' Viktor Orbán's right-hand man warns of 'civil war' if Europe fails to deal with migrant crisis

But Mr Orban, the former deputy PM, said the UK Government is failing to "show any interest" in cooperating with Budapest on the issue.

In September 2015, some 138,396 migrants crossed the Serbian border into Hungary, mostly from Syria and other Middle Eastern countries affected by conflict. After reinforcing the border fence with Serbia, illegal crossings had dropped a year later to just 152.

The political strategist stressed he did not want to give advice "to the British people," but pointed to the strategy adopted by the Australian government in its own campaign to stop illegal arrivals.

Promoting a strategy of deterrence over attempting to disrupt criminal gangs, a likely jab at Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's approach to the crisis, Mr Orban said of the Australian approach: "It was more about deterrence politically and legally because and their message was the same.

"If you get on the boat, (if) you try to make it illegally, you will not make it to Australia because we will bring you to another place, which is not a place where you want to go. So don't try to do so."

Mr Orban also discussed how human rights were central to the migration debate from the perspective of Europeans facing a large number of foreigners moving to their countries.

He told the People's Channel: "Mass migration is a human rights issue ... those people who are parts of the national community, like the ordinary Hungarian people, they also have human rights, and it's part of their human rights that they were born in a in a cultural environment, and to keep that cultural environment, which is around all of us, it's a value."

Mr Orban added: "Everybody is talking about the human rights of those who are who are coming. But what about the human rights of those who are living there for centuries? So there has to be a balance."

He said he first visited the UK 20 years ago and still loved the city today, even though he had "experienced the changes", adding it had been through a "sad change" that had occurred "faster than we would all think".

Issuing a stark warning about fears he has for "civil war" in European countries if countries such as Britain fail to deal with the ongoing integration crisis, Mr Orban said he had visited "no-go zones" on the continent.

Pressed for his reaction to the so-called Coalition of the Willing commitment to deploy troops in the event of a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Mr Orban said it was a "brutal act of escalation."

He warned: "The sooner we are able to stop the fight, the better for everyone. Stopping the fight requires diplomacy and requires agreement with the Russians, whether we like it or not. Whether we accept what was done by the Russians or not. But if we are having acts of escalation, clear signs of escalation before the negotiations, it leads us to a to another way."

Questioned about Hungary's continued consumption of Russian oil amid the war in Ukraine, Mr Orban said: "Energy sovereignty cannot mean that you cut out one energy resource. It's not logical. It's not rational. From the Hungarian point of view, energy sovereignty and widening the manoeuvring space and widening the opportunities and lowering the costs means that we use different resources and we use different routes."

Mr Orban criticised Brussels' strategies on nuclear energy, saying regulations to cut back on nuclear power in Germany were "the stupidest idea I ever heard".

The Home Office has been approached for comment.

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