白芝浩专栏 - 自民党无法作为中间派再次崛起【经济学人】 [英国媒体]

Bagehot

The Lib Dems are not filling the void at the centre of politics

自民党无法作为中间派在政坛崛起

The party’s greatest opportunity in decades has coincided with its implosion

自民党数十年来最佳的翻身机会，因其内部崩塌而错过



译者注：英国自民党的党徽是金色背景的自由之鸟



Sep 14th 2017   

2017年9月14日

THE biggest puzzle in British politics is why the Liberal Democrats are so feeble. Forty-eight per cent of Britons voted to remain in the European Union. Millions of people think that Theresa May is a discredited mediocrity and that Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s leader, is a dangerous fantasist. And yet the only party that campaigned to keep Britain in the EU and that proudly stands for the “open and tolerant” centre against extremists on left and right can’t even muster 8% of the vote. What should be the vital centre has become a no-man’s-land, if not a killing field.

英国政坛令人最大惑不解的是，为何自民党会如此弱鸡。在脱欧公投中，有48%的人选择留欧，数以百万的选民都认为，特蕾莎·梅是一个不靠谱的庸才，而工党领袖杰里米·科尔宾是一个危险的狂热分子。然而在这样的情况下，自民党这个唯一以英国留欧作为竞选纲领、并自豪的以“开放和包容”为口号代表中间派与左右翼极端分子做斗争的党派，在大选中的得票率甚至不足8%。如果不是因为受到重大外部打击，那究竟是什么原因，会使得原本这样一个充满干劲的中间党派，变的人人避之不及？

This newspaper endorsed the Lib Dems in the election in June, partly because the other two parties were so unappetising and partly in the hope that a Lib Dem revival would spark a more general realignment. But voters have not forgiven the party for joining the Conservatives in forming the coalition government of 2010-15. A former president of the Lib Dems once described his party as the “cockroach” of British politics, for its ability to survive. Yet the coalition was an industrial-strength cockroach killer. The Lib Dems went into the coalition with 23% of the vote and 57 seats. They came out with 7.9% of the vote and eight seats. They lost all but one of their MEPs and thousands of local councillors. The coalition forced them to sign up to a programme of austerity and higher university fees that was anathema to the party’s members, who are disproportionately employed in the public sector. Worse, raising fees meant breaking a manifesto pledge.

在今年6月的大选中，本刊替自民党做了背书，一部分原因是因为保守党和工党实在是令人倒胃口，还有一部分原因是希望自民党的复兴能引发更大范围的政治洗牌。然而，选民们并没有忘记自民党参与上一届保守党---自民党联合政府中（2010-2015）所作的”贡献“。某位自民党前党主席曾将该党描述为英国政坛的“不死小强”，来形容该党的生存能力之强，然而那次联合执政就像工业用强度的蟑螂灭杀剂，自民党带着23%的选票份额和57个下议院席位参加联合执政，任期结束后灰头土脸的还剩下7.9%的选票份额和8个席位，失去了所有也是唯一的欧洲议会席位，还有数以千计的本地议会席位。在联合执政期间，自民党迫于无奈签署了一系列紧缩开支和提高大学学费的政令，这样的命令对该党从事于公共事业大大小小职位的党员来说，无异于一纸退党驱逐令，更糟糕的是，提高学费比例更是对选举纲领的赤裸裸背叛。

The party’s implosion after the coalition coincided with the opening up of its biggest opportunity in decades: the Brexit vote. Had the party entered the post-referendum world with 60 seats and a charismatic leader it would have had a chance of engineering the political realignment that it has always dreamed of. Instead it entered that world as a political husk. A party with eight MPs was not well positioned to attract voters who wanted to reverse the referendum. The Lib Dems are now in a classic cycle of decline, with a weak bench ensuring that they have weak leaders who fail to break through to voters.

自民党在联合执政结束后，开始从内部崩塌，巧合的是随之而来的却是其几十年来最佳的翻身机会：脱欧公投，如果说该党能够带着60个下议院席位和一位魅力超凡的领袖，开始脱欧公投后运作的话，或许他们已经能有机会实现其一直以来的梦想，推动英国政坛势力的重新划分。然而现实是如此骨感，仅有的8位议员并没有顺风顺水地吸引到足够多想要推翻公投结果的选民。自民党现在正处在一个典型的重建期，因在议会中缺乏号召力，所以只能从中选出一个孱弱的党魁，无法在选票上获得突破

Tim Farron, the party’s leader in 2015-17, was arguably the weakest head of any major political party since the second world war. A poll taken two weeks before the election found that half the electorate could not name him. The one thing he was known for was that he was an evangelical Christian who was uncomfortable about homosexuality and abortion. This reduced his appeal to the secular liberals who formed the core of the Remain vote. When it came to attracting the young, the Lib Dems might as well have chosen someone who went around proclaiming that beards and tattoos were outward displays of moral depravity.

自民党在2015-2017年期间的党魁蒂姆·法伦，可能是自二战后英国所有主要政党中存在感最低的党魁...在本次大选前两周的民调中，有一般选民甚至都不知道他的名字。唯一一件让他出名的事，是因为他是一名福音派的基督徒，对同性恋和堕胎感到耿耿于怀。这一点削弱了他在传统意义上自民党选民中的号召力，而这些人恰恰是投留欧票的中坚力量。在吸引年轻人这一块上，自民党或许又下了一招臭棋，他们当时负责宣传的负责人，到处宣扬蓄胡须和纹身是道德败坏的外在体现....

Vince Cable, the party’s current leader, is in a different class from Mr Farron. He is by far the most intelligent of the three party leaders (which is not meant to be damning with faint praise). He is a technocrat with a wealth of experience in both the private sector (he was chief economist for Shell in 1995-97) and in government (he was business secretary in the coalition) and lots of ideas for fixing problems like intergenerational inequality. He is also a publicity hog: he appeared on “Strictly Come Dancing”, a popular TV show, and has just published a novel, “Open Arms”.

党派的现任党魁文斯·凯布尔，非提姆·法伦可比，他是最近三代党魁中最睿智的一位（真心话，并非明褒实贬），他是一位技术派政客，同时拥有在私营企业（他1995-1997年在壳牌公司担任首席经济师）和政府工作（在联合2010-2015执政期间他担任商业大臣）的丰富履历，有诸多手腕来处理譬如”年轻人和年长者之间的财富不平等“这类问题。他也非常热衷于公共宣传：曾经上过一档受欢迎的电视节目《舞动奇迹》，还刚出版了一本新书《敞开怀抱》

So Mr Cable will save his party from being ignored. But the other points on his CV may not work in his favour. Voters want moral purity rather than experience, particularly if that experience involves working for a giant oil company. They want magicians who can shake the money tree rather than economists who point out that money trees don’t exist. Mr Cable also has two big drawbacks. He is 74 years old. Admittedly this makes him only six years older than Labour’s leader, but Mr Corbyn is essentially a young idealist trapped in an ageing body. Mr Cable is also the man who, as business secretary, introduced the bill raising tuition fees. Videos of him making that speech in Parliament will kill any chances of the Lib Dems breaking through to the young.

凯布尔的确能为自民党拉来不少人气，但他履历上那些点缀装饰并不能帮助到他，选民们更看重的是实实在在的好处，而不是丰富的履历，尤其是替超级资本家打工的履历。选民们希望一个能帮他们变出摇钱树的魔术师，而不是一个指出摇钱树并不存在的经济学家... 对凯布尔来说，有两点对他非常不利：其一，他已经74岁了，坦白说他只比工党领袖科尔宾大6岁，但科尔宾年迈的身躯下，却藏着一颗共产主义年轻的心。其二，在就任商业大臣期间，就是他负责向大众颁布了提高学费的法案，当年他在议会演讲的视频，剥夺了自民党在年轻人中拉票的可能。

译者注：moral purity 字面意思为纯洁的道德，而对政治家来说，没有比给选民实在好处更纯洁的道德了
译者注：关于摇钱树这个梗，保守党的纲领一向以紧缩政策着称，但于今年大选失去多数席位后，以10亿英镑为代价，与北爱民主统一党达成协议，得以继续执政，当时BBC在谈话节目《问答时间》中曾经讽刺道，对保守党而言，钱就像神奇的摇钱树，摇一摇总是有的

Mr Cable is also confronted with two problems that his talents are unlikely to equal. The first is Labour’s resurgence. The party has all but locked up the youth vote with a combination of anti-austerity politics and vague idealism. It has built a fearsome campaign machine that threatens to destroy the Lib Dems’ established advantage as a campaigning force. Above all, it has succeeded brilliantly, if disgracefully, in preserving “strategic ambiguity” on the question of Brexit by sending reassuring signals to both Remainers (who might otherwise be attracted to the Lib Dems) and Leavers (who once abandoned Labour for the UK Independence Party). Labour is doing its best to complete the work of destruction that the Conservatives began when they seduced the Lib Dems into jumping into bed with them in 2010.

---另外，文斯·凯布尔还有两个就他的能力而言很难应付的问题待处理：其一就是工党的重新崛起，工党靠着反紧缩政策和模棱两可的意识形态的组合拳，差一点点就全部包揽了年轻人的选票，工党建立了一种非常可怕的宣传机制，对自民党威胁很大，可以使得其作为一股竞选势力存在的既定优势荡然无存，最重要的是，工党已经取得了辉煌战果，尽管不怎么光彩，他们通过在脱欧这个问题上采取的“模糊战略”，在留欧派（本该是自民党的票仓）和脱欧派（曾一度抛弃工党转投英国独立党）之间左右逢源，工党正在努力蚕食保守党自2010年诱骗自民党误上贼船以来所建立的优势

Stuck in the middle

进退两难

The second is the party’s ancestral problem with its identity. The Lib Dems are as much a hotch-potch as a party. They have always been divided between classical liberals, who believe in free-market economics, and communitarians, who are motivated by local issues. (Mr Cable is at the liberal end of the spectrum.) They are split between anti-establishment types, who are voting for “none of the above”, and establishment types who think the Lib Dems represent good sense. The party of electoral reform has 100 members in the House of Lords compared with just 12 in the Commons. The party of the open economy has its strongest roots in the most isolated bits of the Celtic fringe, such as Cornwall.

而第二个问题就是自民党历史难题：党派性质，自民党更像一个大杂烩，而不是纯粹的政党。他们中有的人是典型的自由主义者，崇尚自由市场经济学；有的人是提倡公有制的社会主义者，为地方利益所驱使（凯布尔本人属于自由主义者一派）。他们还分成了号称要“打倒一切”的反建制派，以及认为自民党就该代表着理智判断的建制派。本次大选后，自民党在上议院拥有100个席位，但在下议院仅拥有12个席位，该党派鼓吹的开放式经济，其最强拥趸却来自于一些最偏远最保守的凯尔特人的保留地，譬如康沃尔

The first rule of modern politics is that almost anything can happen. The two major parties are dicing with disaster, the Tories by tying their fate to Brexit and the Labour Party by embracing Corbynism. France’s Emmanuel Macron has proved that anti-establishment sentiment can be harnessed by the centre as well as the right and the left. But so far the Liberal Democrats show few signs that they possess either the ideas or the momentum to fill the void at the heart of British politics.

当代政治的首要法则就是：凡事皆有可能。保守党和工党正陷入一场引发灭顶之灾的豪赌，保守党把他们的命运压在脱欧上，而工党则投入了科尔宾主义的怀抱。法国总统马克隆已经证明了反建制派这张牌既能被左右翼驾驭，也能被中间派左右，但竭今为止自民党并没有从意识上或行动上展露出任何作为中间派在英国政坛崛起的迹象