文章来源：《经济学人》Jul 14th 2022 期 BritAIn 栏目
The Conservative Party after Boris Johnson
鲍里斯·约翰逊之后的保守党
Trust exercise
信任练习
The race to be the next prime minister is formally under way
下一任首相的角逐正式展开
(Updated Jul 15th 2022)
Editor’s note (July 14th): This article was updated after the second-round ballot in the Conservative Party leadership election.
本文更新于保守党领袖选举第二轮投票后
The conservative party is a machine for winning and holding power. It has a remarkable capacity for reinvention, changing before change is forced upon it at the ballot box. Boris Johnson’s successor will be the party’s fourth leader, and Britain’s fourth prime minister, since it entered government in 2010. Before 2024 is out, they will be pursuing an unprecedented fifth general election victory.
保守党在权力中占上风并掌握着权力。它具有非凡的再创造能力，并在投票箱强迫它改变之前就已经做出改变了。鲍里斯·约翰逊的继任者将是该党的第四任领导人，也是自该党2010年执政以来的英国第四任首相。在2024年之前，他们将寻求史无前例的第五次大选胜利。
The contest that is now under way is still in its early days. By the afternoon of July 14th, Tory mps had whittled down the field from an initial 11 candidates to five; the last two contenders left standing by mps will appear in hustings over the summer, before a ballot of party members leads to the unveiling of a new prime minister on September 5th. A leadership contest is not a manifesto for government: the candidates’ platforms are not addressed to the wider British public. Yet all the same the early days of a contest reveal where the centre of gravity lies within a party, and where it thinks its route to power lies.
【1】whittle down 减少
【2】hustings [竞选前候选人的] 演讲集会目前正在进行的竞争还处于初期阶段。到7月14日下午，保守党议员已将候选人从最初的11名减少到5名；在9月5日党内投票揭晓新首相之前，最后两位议员候选人将在夏季的竞选演讲集会中亮相。领导权之争并不是政府的宣言：候选人的政纲并没有面向更广泛的英国公众。然而，尽管如此，竞争的早期揭示了一个政党内部的重心在哪里，以及它认为自己的权力之路在哪里。
The contours of the party after Mr Johnson seem to be to the right of where they were on economics and culture. Some of his most controversial policies have become a new consensus among mps. But there are also signs—most obviously in the rise of Penny Mordaunt, a former defence secretary who has swiftly become the bookmakers’ favourite (see chart)—of how this steelier tone can be reconciled with the party’s hopes of winning the next election. “There has been a shift [to the right],” says one centrist minister. “But it is the genius of the Tory party to harness it and get it into a vaguely acceptable place.”
约翰逊之后的党内轮廓在经济和文化问题上的立场似乎比过去更偏右。他的一些最具争议的政策已经成为议员们的新共识。但也有迹象表明，这种强硬的论调是怎样与该党赢得下届选举的希望相符的，最明显的就是迅速成为了博彩公司的宠儿(见图表)的前国防部长彭妮•莫当特的崛起。一位中间派部长表示：“出现了（向右翼）的转变。但这正是保守党的本领，它能利用这样的“转变”，并将其推向一个勉强可以接受的地步。”
Like a body expelling an illness, the entire field repudiates Mr Johnson’s jocular and scandal-prone style of government. All candidates boast of their integrity, seriousness and grip; none seeks to be his heir. Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor who picked up the most endorsements among mps in the first ballot on July 13th, promises an end to “comforting fairy tales”. Kemi Badenoch, an insurgent from the right of the party, declares that voters are “exhausted by platitudes and empty rhetoric”. Inexperience is a virtue: Tom Tugendhat, a former soldier who has never held ministerial office, promises a “clean start”.
所有竞争者都否定了约翰逊诙谐幽默、丑闻缠身的执政风格，就像身体驱逐疾病一样。所有的候选人都夸耀自己的正直、认真和控制力；没有人想成为他的“继承人”。在7月13日的第一轮投票中获得议员最多支持的前财政大臣里希•苏纳克承诺结束“令人欣慰的童话故事”。党内右翼的反叛者基米·巴德诺赫宣称，选民们已经“被陈词滥调和空洞的言辞弄得筋疲力尽”。缺乏经验是一种优点：汤姆•图根哈特曾是一名士兵，但从未担任过部长职务，他承诺会有一个“全新的开始”。
Ms Mordaunt is the greatest beneficiary of a party hankering for change. She is the “antidote to Boris” and a “cleanskin”, according to supporters at a garden party she co-hosted in Westminster on July 13th, complete with jugs of Pimms, a brass band and sponge cake. “We’ve had three years of celebrity-tosser-on-a-high-wire politics,” says one. A naval reservist who fell out of favour under Mr Johnson, Ms Mordaunt urged mps to pick a leader based not on ideology but “because you trust their motives”. Unlike flighty Mr Johnson, says another ally, she gets the provincial habits of the volunteer party.
【1】hanker 渴望
【2】reservist 预备役军人莫当特女士是这个渴望变革的政党的最大受益者。7月13日在威斯敏斯特联合举办的一个花园聚会上，她的支持者称她是“鲍里斯的解毒剂”以及“净化剂”，聚会上还配有几罐皮姆酒、一支铜管乐队和海绵蛋糕。“我们已经有三年的名人走钢丝的政治，”一个支持者说。作为一名在约翰逊先生领导下失宠的海军预备役军人，她敦促议员们不要根据意识形态来选择领导人，而是“因为你相信他们的动机”。另一位盟友说，她不像不负责任的约翰逊，她有志愿为党服务的地方习惯。
Mr Johnson’s vision of an activist state improving the lot of the poor northern towns he won in 2019 is also not widely shared. This is a contest in which everyone claims to be a small-state conservative. Ms Badenoch pledges a “limited government focused on essentials”. The serving chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, who was knocked out of the race on July 13th, promised to cut departmental budgets by 20%.
约翰逊先生的愿景是建立一个积极的政府，改善他在2019年赢得的北部贫困城镇的命运，这一愿景也没有得到广泛认同。在这场竞选中，每个人都自称是小政府保守派。巴德诺赫承诺，将建立一个“专注于基本问题的有限政府”。在7月13日被淘汰出局的现任财务大臣纳迪姆·扎哈维承诺将削减20%的部门预算。
Yet in other ways Mr Johnson has transformed his party. The opening days of the contest were marked by frenzied promises of tax cuts as a gulf opened up between Mr Sunak, who says tax cuts must wait until inflation is brought under control, and many of his rivals, who said they should start now and in dramatic fashion. Ms Mordaunt wants to cut fuel duty in half; Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, promises a reduction in corporation tax and national insurance, a payroll tax. Such pledges revealed a Johnsonesque aversion to hard choices. “We can’t simply be accountants trying to balance the books the whole time. We have got to look to growth as well,” said Kwasi Kwarteng, a cabinet minister who backs Ms Truss.
然而，在其他方面，约翰逊先生改变了他的政党。竞选开始的几天，人们疯狂地承诺减税，但苏纳克先生和他的许多竞争对手之间出现了巨大的鸿沟，苏纳克先生说，减税必须等到通货膨胀得到控制，而他的许多竞争对手则说，他们应该从现在开始，并且以一种戏剧性的方式开始。莫当特女士希望将燃油税削减一半；外交大臣利兹·特拉斯承诺减少公司税和国民保险(工资税)。这样的承诺透露出一种约翰逊式的对艰难抉择的厌恶。支持特拉斯的内阁部长夸西·夸腾称，“我们不能只是做一直试图平衡账目的会计师。我们也必须着眼于增长”。
Some of Mr Johnson’s most radical policies will survive him. In his final months in office, the government agreed a deal to deport some asylum-seekers to Rwanda. Ms Truss prepared legislation that would allow Britain unilaterally to rewrite the bit of the eu withdrawal treaty that bears on Northern Ireland. Such policies were regarded by much of the party’s liberal wing as an abrogation of Britain’s obligations. Now they are its new norm: Mr Tugendhat, probably the most liberal candidate in the race, was swift to endorse them.
约翰逊的一些最激进的政策将在他卸任后继续存在。在他执政的最后几个月，政府同意将一些寻求庇护者驱逐到卢旺达。特拉斯准备立法，允许英国单方面重写欧盟脱欧条约中与北爱尔兰有关的部分。这些政策被保守党的自由派认为是对英国义务的废除。现在他们成了新常态：图根哈特，可能是这次竞选中最开明的候选人，很快就支持了这些政策。
Suella Braverman, the attorney-general, sought to shift the dial even further to the right, promising to shred the Northern Ireland protocol entirely and to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. She has since been knocked out of the contest, but historically such campaigns can force others to make pledges they later regret, says Tim Bale, an historian at Queen Mary University of London.
英国总检察长苏拉·布雷弗曼试图进一步右倾，承诺彻底撕破《北爱尔兰议定书》，并退出《欧洲人权公约》。伦敦玛丽女王大学的历史学家蒂姆·贝尔说，自那以后，她被淘汰出局，但从历史上看，这样的竞选活动会迫使其他人做出事后后悔的承诺。
Rows over culture, race and gender identity scarcely featured in the leadership contest of 2019, when Mr Johnson triumphed. The world has since changed, and these issues now course through the party’s veins. Ms Badenoch, a disciple of Thomas Sowell, an American academic, has made confronting “zero-sum identity politics” the centrepiece of her campaign. Candidates skirmish over who is best-placed to resist transgender activism; Ms Mordaunt spent the first days of the campaign denying sympathy for that cause.
在2019年约翰逊获胜的竞选中，围绕文化、种族和性别认同的争吵几乎没有出现。自那以后，世界发生了变化，这些问题现在已经渗透到了保守党的血管中。作为美国学者托马斯·索维尔的弟子，巴德诺赫将对抗“零和身份政治”作为她竞选的核心。候选人在谁最适合抵制跨性别运动的问题上发生冲突；莫当特在竞选的最初几天里否认人们对这一事业的同情。
Whether this terrain is one on which the Tories can fight and win the next general election is less clear. Unfunded tax cuts are likely to fuel inflation, which is already squeezing living standards, and to force the Bank of England to tighten monetary policy more. The National Health Service, which Mr Cameron and Mr Johnson both regarded as the route to success, is suffering severe backlogs; it has barely intruded on the contest. Culture wars animate the public less than they do mps. The Labour Party has a commanding lead in the polls.
保守党能否在这一领域展开战斗并赢得下一次大选，目前还不清楚。没有资金支持的减税可能会加剧已经在“挤压”生活水平的通货膨胀，并迫使英格兰银行进一步收紧货币政策。卡梅伦和约翰逊都认为是通向成功之路的国家医疗服务体系，目前正面临严重的积压；它几乎没有“参与”竞争。文化战争对公众的影响不如对议员的影响大。工党在民意调查中遥遥领先。
Although the peril faced by the Tories has not featured much in public debate thus far, these hard electoral realities weigh more heavily in private. A formula of personal trustworthiness and lower taxes differentiates Ms Mordaunt from both Mr Johnson and one of her main rivals. “No-one really knows what she thinks,” said one half-hearted supporter, as the band struck up the theme from “The Great Escape”. “But Rishi will lose me my seat.” That instinct for reinvention still exists.■
尽管到目前为止，保守党面临的危险在公开辩论中并没有引起太多关注，但这些艰难的选举现实在私下里的影响更大。个人可信度和低税收的原则使莫当特与约翰逊以及她的主要竞争对手之一区别开来。当乐队奏响《大逃亡》的主题曲时，一位半心半意的支持者说:“没有人真正知道她在想什么。但里希会让我失去我的席位。”再造的本能依然存在。■
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