Jakab filed a labor lawsuit, but lost it, the court ruled that "mentioning the name of Jobbik to the Gypsies is frightening" in July 2011.

[20][21][22] Since Jobbik's board collectively resigned due to the poor results achieved at the 2019 European Parliament election,[23] he expressed his interest to run for the presidential seat.

Interviewed by ATV's Straight Talk show on 29 August 2019, Péter Jakab announced his candidacy for Jobbik's presidential seat at the party's National Congress in September.

According to Jakab's statement, the party has arrived at the political centre, offering the opportunity for freedom and prosperity to all decent Hungarians, especially those who have not received it in the last three decades.

Several prominent members left Jobbik in the subsequent months, including János Bencsik, István Szávay, Tibor Bana, former leader Tamás Sneider, Gergely Farkas and Ádám Mirkóczki,[35][36][37][38] while Andrea Varga-Damm was expelled from the party.

[41] Jakab started his campaign very early, demonstrating he is one among ordinary people (he was accused of populism by both pro-government and independent media when he showed that he eats parizer and kifli before the parliamentary session).

[43] Simultaneously, Jakab became known for his outspoken and offensive tone in parliamentary sessions during the Questions to the Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

[48] In the first round of the prime ministerial primary, Jakab – who though was featured as a front-runner in opinion polls – came to only the fourth place (14.08%) and was eliminated.

Analysts said Jakab started the campaign too early, which suffocated in the autumn, the politician could not change the pace and the image of the "ordinary man" could not be turned into votes.

A major factor was, according to analysts, that hundreds of thousands of former Jobbik voters turned away from the party and supported far-right Our Homeland Movement or did not go to the polls.

No individual candidate of the Jobbik was able to win his constituency and the party received only 10 MPs in the new parliament via the joint national list.

[54] Immediately after the disclosure of results, Jakab blamed Márki-Zay for the defeat, claiming that the prime-minister-candidate "received an army of six opposition parties in October and a huge advantage.

[58] On 20 August 2022, Péter Jakab announced the formation of his own political movement named "On the People's Side" (Hungarian: "A Nép Pártján").