【经济学人】白芝浩专栏 - 保守党新一代领导人，呼之欲出！ [英国媒体]

Bagehot

Meet the Conservative Party’s new torchbearers

保守党新一代领导人，呼之欲出!

The Tories need to promote their next generation of leaders—and fast

保守党们啊，请赶快完成新老交替



Oct 7th 2017

2017年10月7日

THE party that met in Manchester this week was in a dismal mood: divided over Brexit, depressed by the recent election debacle and disillusioned with its leadership. The only energy in the conference was energy tinged with derangement. The biggest crowds gravitated to hardline Brexiteers who argued that Britain should leave the European Union “tomorrow” and that Brussels should be paying us rather than us paying them. A great party is in danger of becoming a fanatical sect.

本周在曼彻斯特举行的保守党年会，因下列话题，可谓是愁云密布：脱欧问题上的分歧，6月大选的惨败，以及对梅姨领导才能的幻想破灭。唯一在大会上令人精神一振的，只有那份癫狂。人群簇拥着那些硬脱欧份子，叫嚣着“脱欧指日可待”、“是欧盟该付分手费，而不是英国付”等口号，活生生把一个伟大的党派变成了狂热的教派。

By any reasonable measure the Conservatives are lagging behind Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. Tory party membership is probably a fifth that of Labour and may well be lower than that of the Liberal Democrats. Almost half the Conservative Party’s members are over 65 and only 5% are 18-24. In June’s election the party lost every age group under 45.

于情也好，于理也罢，保守党正在被科尔宾的工党超越，党员人数只有工党的五分之一，可能比自民党人数还低，几乎一半的党员年龄都超过65岁，18-24岁年龄段的党员只占5%，在6月的大选中，45岁以下的每一个年龄段，选票数量全面落后

But the party does have one big thing on its side: an impressive cohort of young MPs who for the most part got their parliamentary seats in the 2010 and 2015 intakes, as part of David Cameron’s modernisation drive. This generation contains a remarkable range of talents. Were it not for his catastrophic decision to call the EU referendum, Mr Cameron would have gone down in history as one of the Tories’ best party managers. Rory Stewart has succeeded in the demanding professions of the armed forces, the intelligence service and academia; Tom Tugendhat served in the army in Iraq and Afghanistan; Rishi Sunak is a successful entrepreneur with remarkable contacts in both America and India. And outside Parliament but waiting in the wings, Ruth Davidson has demonstrated her ability to take apart a politician, Nicola Sturgeon, who supposedly had history on her side.

可是至少还有一点值得骄傲：作为前首相大卫·卡梅伦发起的现代化进程的一部分，一群于2010或2015年新当选的年轻议员。这一代人拥有着非凡的天赋，若非发起灾难性的脱欧公投，卡梅伦或许已作为保守党史上最佳领导人之一而名留青史，在这些人中：罗里·斯图尔特于军界、情报界、学术界均有所斩获；汤姆·图根德哈特曾于伊拉克和阿富汗服役；瑞希·松纳克作为一名企业家，成功周旋于美洲和印度之间；在威斯敏斯特宫外，羽翼已丰、才华横溢的苏格兰保守党领袖鲁斯·戴维森将占据主场优势的苏格兰民族党领袖尼古拉斯·斯特金驳的体无完肤

In her darkest days after her election debacle Theresa May told the 1922 Committee of senior MPs that, “I got us into this mess and I’m going to get us out.” So far she has done little to make good on her promise. Mrs May’s biggest mistake has been to use her powers of patronage for purely defensive purposes, balancing the party’s established factions against each other in order to shore up her position. That has given her a cabinet that lacks either direction or discipline. Boris Johnson, her foreign secretary, is forever challenging her authority in public and other ministers are doing the same in private. She should instead have used her powers of patronage to remake the upper echelons of her party by promoting talented younger Tories.

6月大选惨败后，梅姨在接受保守党1922委员会质询时曾说过：“是我导致大家陷入困境，我有责任带领大家摆脱它”，然而目前为止梅姨离履行她的承诺还差的很远。梅姨最大的错误就是将任免权单纯用来防御，在党内的既得利益派别之间搞平衡来巩固自己的地位，这样做就导致了她的内阁缺乏明确的发展方向和服从感，外交大臣鲍里斯·约翰逊一直在公开挑战她的权威，其他大臣部长们也在暗地里做同样的事，梅姨应当将她的任免权用来改组党派的高层人士，提拔更多的年轻保守党员来吸收新鲜血液

The current cabinet is ripe for a makeover, if not a complete gutting. Benjamin Disraeli once mocked the opposing front bench as a row of exhausted volcanoes (“Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest”). The current Tory front bench is a row of exhausted molehills. Philip Hammond is doing a decent job of steering the economy through Brexit, and delivered a good speech in Manchester. Amber Rudd is a competent if not scintillating home secretary. But what on Earth is the point of Chris Grayling, the transport secretary? Or indeed of a foreign secretary who is as despised abroad as he is divisive at home?

是时候对现任内阁进行改组了，否则内阁从里到外都要烂透了。保守党着名领导人本杰明·迪斯雷利曾经嘲讽对面自由党前排议员为“一排死火山”（原话为“帕利德峰上见不到一丝火苗“），而现任内阁充其量就是一群江郎才尽的小土丘：财相菲利普·哈蒙德兢兢业业地为英国经济掌舵，为脱欧顺利过渡，他在曼彻斯特保守党年会上发表了一篇不错的演说；安博·鲁德能够胜任内政大臣，虽然她不是那么的才华横溢；但其他人譬如运输大臣克里斯·格雷林到底在干点啥？还有我们的外交大臣，在国外被人鄙视，在国内又制造纷争

译者注：帕利德峰是南极大陆的一座山峰

Fast-tracking the younger generation would help the party to tackle its problem with younger voters. The party’s top jobs are now held by a gerontocracy. Mrs May and Mr Hammond are a generation older than their predecessors, Mr Cameron and George Osborne, and Mrs May’s closest confidant is her Oxford contemporary, Damian Green. As well as hampering the party’s attempt to appeal to younger voters, gerontification is causing internal management problems. Mr Tugendhat’s success in deposing Crispin Blunt from his position as chair of the House of Commons foreign-affairs committee shows just how much pressure there is for change from the younger generation.

与时俱进的年轻保守党员将能够帮助保守党吸引更多年轻选民，目前保守党的领导职位都把持在年长者的手里，梅姨和哈蒙德比起他们的前任组合大卫·卡梅伦和乔治·奥斯本要来的年长，而梅姨最亲密的同盟者副首相达米安·格林也和她一样毕业于同时期的牛津大学，领导岗位的年长化不仅阻碍了保守党吸引更多的年轻选民，还造成了内部的管理问题。今年7月，汤姆·图根德哈特艰难击败了年长的克里斯潘·布伦特当选下议院外交事务特别委员会主席，证明了年轻保守党员想要接班有多么的困难

Fast-tracking young stars might provide more diverse faces as well as youthful ones. The party saw its share of the ethnic minority vote fall from 24% in 2015 to 19% in 2017, a drop that may have cost it 40 seats in the election and certainly sounds an alarm bell in a fast-diversifying society. The younger generation includes several leading lights who challenge the idea that the Tory party is a white one. Mr Sunak and Kwasi Kwarteng, both the children of immigrants, have stellar academic credentials. Sam Gyimah was brought up partly in Ghana before going to a British state school then Oxford. Nusrat Ghani is the party’s highly regarded first female Muslim MP. Having done so much to retoxify the Tory brand with her (largely vain) pursuit of Brexit-supporting working-class voters, Mrs May has a duty to detoxify it again by producing a more diverse cabinet.

吸收与时俱进的保守党年轻党员不仅能提供新鲜血液，还能带来多元化。保守党少数民族选票份额从2015年的24%降低到了2017年的19%，若以纯粹选票数字计算，这个比例可是会导致40个议会席位的丢失，在如今这样一个快速多元化的社会，这无疑是一记警钟，年轻保守党员包括数位重要人物都能证明，保守党不是全部由白人组成的：议员瑞希·松纳克和夸西·科沃腾都来自于移民家庭，拥有杰出的学术资历；议员萨姆·吉马部分童年于加纳度过，他随后返回英国就读于公立学校，并考上了牛津大学；议员努斯·加尼是备受瞩目的保守党第一位女性穆斯林议员。 梅姨为赢得支持脱欧的工薪阶层选民而干了很多砸保守党招牌的事儿（大部分都徒劳无功），现在她应该将功赎罪，组建一个多元化的内阁来抵消这些影响了。

Out with the old

除旧

Perhaps most important, fast-tracking young stars will provide some new intellectual energy. The cabinet is entirely devoid of big, or even small, thinkers. Even a relatively intelligent figure such as Mr Hammond is a technocrat rather than a philosopher. By contrast the next generation contains a number of intellectuals. Mr Kwarteng has written excellent books on British imperialism. Mr Stewart has held a chair at Harvard. George Freeman is a particularly impressive policy entrepreneur. He recently organised a festival of ideas, billed as the Conservative Glastonbury, and possesses an ability to relate broad conservative principles to specific proposals.

或许最重要的一点，与时俱进的年轻党员们将会带来新的智慧，新的活力。整个内阁都缺乏一种勤于思考的氛围，就连相对而言较为睿智的财相菲利普·哈蒙德也是一位技术派政客，而非思想创导者，与之相比，年轻一代中有着大量知识分子，夸西·科沃腾曾写过一本非常精彩的关于大英帝国的书籍；罗里·斯图尔曾在哈佛大学担任教授；乔治·弗里曼是一位令人尤其印象深刻的政策倡导者，他最近组织了一场思想交流盛会，声称是保守党的“格拉斯顿伯里音乐节”，他展露出了在特定场合发扬保守党普世价值的能力。

In his conference speech Mr Johnson reminded the Tories of Winston Churchill’s great line about giving the lion its roar. A more apposite line for the Tory party’s current predicament is John F. Kennedy’s one about passing the torch to a new generation. The generation at the top of the Conservative Party has been given its chance and, in too many cases, has been found wanting. It is time to give a chance to a new generation—one that knows what it is to live in a world of student debt and out-of-reach houses and that has the energy and ideas to renew a fading party. Mrs May’s job in the time remaining to her is to make sure that the torch is passed as smoothly and quickly as possible.

在保守党年会的演说中，鲍里斯·约翰逊提到了保守党着名领导人温斯顿·丘吉尔的名句：“人民拥有狮子般坚强的心，我很荣幸代表他们发出狮子般的怒吼”。然而对保守党目前窘境更贴切的描述是约翰·F·肯尼迪的就职演说”将火炬传给下一代“，这一代的保守党领导人曾有过许多次机会，却都功亏一篑，是时候将权力交给年轻一代了，至少他们懂得如何生活在一个由还不起的助学贷款和八辈子也买不起的房价所组成的世界里，他们有决心有能力来重振一个衰落的政党。在她剩余的任期内，梅姨的工作应该是确保权力的顺利交接，且越快越好。