The bitter end of May

苦涩的五月末

Another British prime minister is destroyed by the Europe question

又一位英国首相被欧洲问题毁了

Theresa May has reached the end of her failed premiership

特蕾莎·梅(Theresa May)已经结束了她失败的首相任期

THERESA MAY’S premiership has entered its surreal phase. On May 22nd the prime minister dutifully read out the ten points of her revised EU withdrawal bill to the House of Commons. The front bench next to her was half-empty, because several members of her cabinet were holed-up somewhere else discussing what to do next. The benches behind her emptied as she spoke. This was not just a prime minister without authority but a prime minister without an audience.

特里萨•梅(THERESA MAY)的首相任期已进入超现实主义阶段。5月22日，首相尽职尽责地向下议院宣读了她修改后的脱欧法案的十个要点。她旁边的前凳子上有一半空着，因为她的几位内阁成员正在别的地方讨论下一步该做什么。她说话时，身后的凳子空了。这不仅是一位没有权威的首相，也是一位没有听众的首相。

词汇

Surreal/超现实主义的；离奇的；不真实的

Cabinet/内阁

The rest of the day was consumed with frantic rumours about her imminent resignation. The good news for Mrs May was that the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs put off a decision to change the party’s rules in order to allow an immediate leadership challenge. The bad news, delivered an hour or so later, was that Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the House and the person responsible for bringing the withdrawal bill before the Commons, resigned, becoming the 36th minister to leave the government. Mrs May avoided further confrontations with disgruntled colleagues only by retreating to Downing Street and turning away ministers who asked to see her. “The sofa is up against the door, she’s not leaving,” remarked Iain Duncan-Smith, a former Tory leader.

那天剩下的时间都被有关她即将辞职的疯狂谣言所占据。对梅来说，好消息是，1922年由保守党后座议员组成的委员会推迟了一项改变保守党规则的决定，以允许立即对领导层发起挑战。大约一个小时后传来的坏消息是，负责向下议院提交撤军法案的众议院领袖安德里亚•利德索姆(Andrea Leadsom)辞职，成为第36位离开政府的部长。为了避免与心怀不满的同事进一步发生冲突，梅只得退回唐宁街，并拒绝了要求见她的大臣们。“沙发靠着门，她不会离开，”前保守党领袖伊恩•邓肯-史密斯(Iain Duncan-Smith)表示。

词汇

Resignation/辞职；放弃；辞职书

Backbench/后座议员席

It is hard to see how Mrs May can hang on for long, even if she adds the kitchen sink to the sofa. The Conservatives are expecting a drubbing in this week’s European election, whose results will be announced on May 27th. Polls put the party in the single figures. Tory MPs from all sides of the party—liberals such as Tom Tugendhat as well as Brexiteers like Steve Baker—are calling for her to go. President Donald Trump may arrive for his state visit on June 3rd to a country without a prime minister.

很难想象梅怎么能坚持很长时间，即使她把厨房的水槽压在沙发上。保守党预计将在本周的欧洲选举中大败，选举结果将于5月27日公布。民意调查显示该党的支持率只有一位数。来自各党派的保守党议员，如汤姆·塔根哈特以及史蒂夫·贝克等脱欧派人士，都呼吁她下台。唐纳德·特朗普总统可能于6月3日抵达一个没有总理的国家进行国事访问。

 

Mrs May has been under pressure to quit for months. What brought matters to a head this week was her revised withdrawal bill. In her plodding style, she tried to win over various interest groups by offering something for everyone: strengthened workers’ rights to please the Labour left, an option for MPs to vote for a second referendum to entice Remainers. She ended up alienating them all. The Tory party’s Brexit wing erupted at the mention of a second referendum; Brexiteer ministers claim that Mrs May “exceeded what was agreed in cabinet”.

几个月来，梅一直承受着辞职的压力。本周最重要的是她修改后的提现法案。在她沉闷的风格中，她试图通过向每个人提供一些东西来赢得各种利益集团的支持:加强工人取悦工党左派的权利，让议员们可以选择进行第二次公投来吸引留欧派。她最终疏远了他们所有人。一提到第二次公投，保守党的脱欧派就爆发了;脱欧派大臣们声称，梅“超出了内阁达成的共识”。

词汇

Plodding/单调乏味的；沉重缓慢的

Referendum/公民投票权；外交官请示书

Alienate/使疏远，离间；让与

As we went to press, Downing Street was still promising to bring forward the withdrawal bill on June 7th. If it does, it will go down to an even bigger defeat than last time. Even former converts such as Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab have said that they will vote against.

截至发稿时，唐宁街仍承诺将于6月7日提出欧盟退出法案法案。如果真的如此，它将遭遇比上次更大的失败。就连鲍里斯•约翰逊(Boris Johnson)和多米尼克•拉布(Dominic Raab)等前皈依者也表示，他们将投反对票。

 

How did the Conservative Party—an outfit that prides itself on its age, wisdom and ruthless appetite for power—get into such a mess? The British establishment has always been ambivalent about the European project, partly because it was on the winning side in the second world war and partly because it has historically seen Britain as a global power, not a continental one. That ambivalence curdled into hatred in some sections of the Tory party as the EU acquired more of the trappings of a state.

保守党——一个以自己的年龄、智慧和对权力的无情欲望为傲的机构——是如何陷入如此混乱的呢?英国当局对欧洲一体化计划一直持矛盾的态度，部分原因是它在二战中站在了胜利一方，部分原因是它从历史上一直把英国视为一个全球强国，而不是一个大陆强国。随着欧盟获得更多国家的标志，这种矛盾心理在保守党的某些部门演变成了仇恨。

词汇

Appetite/食欲；嗜好

Ambivalent/矛盾的；好恶相克的

Continental/大陆的；大陆性的

Curdle/凝固

 

The Brexit referendum of 2016 created a poisonous clash between direct and representative democracy. The Tories’ Brexit wing, convinced that it had the “will of the people” on its side, kept demanding an ever-purer version of Brexit. Those who lean towards Remain refused to vote for a hard Brexit that they thought would impoverish their constituents. As Mrs May’s hold on power has weakened, so has her ability to enforce a compromise.

2016年的英国退欧公投在直接民主和代议制民主之间制造了一场有害的冲突。保守党的脱欧派坚信自己拥有“人民的意愿”，不断要求英国脱欧的版本更加纯粹。那些倾向于留欧的人拒绝投票支持硬退欧，他们认为硬退欧会让选民陷入贫困。随着梅对权力的掌控减弱，她推行妥协的能力也在减弱。

词汇

Referendum/公民投票权

There is also a subtler reason. British politics still has not recovered from the financial crisis of 2008-09, and the blow that it dealt to the country’s globalised, light-regulation model of capitalism. The crisis not only led to a prolonged period of wage stagnation. It also stoked popular demand to “take back control” from the forces that had dominated the economy over the previous decades. The rise of the Labour left, under Jeremy Corbyn, was driven by a demand to discipline global companies that trample on local communities (Mr Corbyn spent much of prime minister’s question time this week lambasting Mrs May for the closure of British Steel). The rise of the nationalist right, most recently in the form of the Brexit Party, is propelled by a desire to insulate Britain from global uncertainty, particularly when it comes to immigration.

还有一个更微妙的原因。英国政治仍未从2008年至2009年的金融危机中恢复过来，这场危机对英国全球化、弱监管的资本主义模式造成了打击。这场危机不仅导致了长期的工资停滞。这也刺激了民众要求“夺回”过去几十年主导经济的力量的控制权。杰里米•科尔宾(Jeremy Corbyn)领导下的工党左派崛起，是受一种要求的推动，即对践踏当地社区的全球企业进行惩戒(科尔宾本周在首相质询时间的大部分时间里，都在抨击梅关闭英国钢铁公司)。民族主义右翼势力的崛起，最近以英国退欧党(Brexit Party)的形式出现，是由一种将英国与全球不确定性隔绝开来的愿望推动的，尤其是在移民问题上。

词汇

Subtler/更加微妙的

Prolonged/  延长的；拖延的；持续很久的

Stagnation/停滞；滞止

Lambaste/痛打；严责；鞭打

The Conservatives are profoundly divided over what to do about this crisis. Broadly speaking, the right of the party wants to complete the Thatcher revolution by deregulating markets still further and slashing taxes. For them, leaving the EU is a prerequisite to turning Britain into an offshore Singapore. The left of the party, meanwhile, wants to return to the One Nation tradition that believes in a more active role for the state and in reining back the excesses of capitalism.

对于如何应对这场危机，保守党内部存在严重分歧。广义上说，保守党的右翼希望通过进一步放松市场管制和减税来完成撒切尔革命。对他们来说，离开欧盟是把英国变成一个离岸新加坡的先决条件。与此同时，该党的左派希望回归“一个国家”的传统，即相信国家应发挥更积极的作用，并遏制资本主义的过度行为。

词汇

slashing taxes/削减税收

Mrs May has proved to be just the wrong person to help the party out of this crisis. She has some of the right instincts—realising two years ago, for instance, that the government needed to increase its majority to avoid being held prisoner by clashing Tory factions, and that it had to deal with the unhappiness that led to Brexit. But she lacked the ability to make these things happen. She is an introvert who dislikes the rough-and-tumble of politics and who tries to run everything through a tiny group of advisers. When she was in her pomp she tried to exclude Parliament from having any say over the Brexit deal.

事实证明，梅正是帮助该党走出这场危机的错误人选。她有一些正确的直觉——例如，她在两年前就意识到政府需要增加其多数席位，以避免被保守党派系之间的冲突所俘虏，而且它必须应对导致英国退欧的不愉快。但她缺乏实现这些目标的能力。她是一个内向的人，不喜欢政治上的混乱，她试图通过一小群顾问来管理一切。在她盛气凌人的时候，她曾试图将议会排除在英国退欧协议之外。

词汇

Pomp/盛况；浮华；威势

The race to succeed her is already approaching a full gallop. It is a measure of how big a mess the party is in that some 20 MPs have signalled that they are running, offering a bewildering range of policies. The favourite is Mr Johnson (see Bagehot).

接替她的赛跑已经接近全速前进了。场面是如此大而乱以至于大约20名议员表示他们正在竞选，提出了一系列令人眼花缭乱的政策。最受欢迎的是约翰逊先生。

词汇

Gallop/疾驰；飞奔

Bewildering/使人困惑的；令人产生混乱的

It is still unclear what will happen when Mrs May does indeed resign—whether she will stay on while a successor is chosen, when the contest will conclude, and whether her successor will feel obliged to call a general election. But one thing is clear. For all Mrs May’s many failings as a politician, she was also the victim of powerful forces that show no sign of abating.

目前还不清楚当梅真的辞职时将会发生什么——在继任者选定期间，她是否会留任，竞选何时结束，她的继任者是否会感到有必要举行大选。但有一件事是清楚的。尽管梅作为一名政治家有许多失败之处，但她也是强大力量的受害者，这些力量丝毫没有减弱的迹象。

词汇

Abating/硬度降低