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I live in Canterbury, where the Labour MP Rosie Duffield increased her slim majority tenfold in the general election. Given Labour’s defeat in almost all of the rest of the UK, it’s worth considering why this happened,.

我住在坎特伯雷,这里的工党议员罗西·达菲尔德(Rosie Duffield)在大选中把她微弱优势提高了10倍。如果联系到工党在英国几乎所有地方的失利,这就值得思考的为什么它会发生。

A prime reason Duffield retained her seat is that that Labour had the support of a rickety but effective anti-Tory common front that counter-balanced the negative factors which were sinking its hopes elsewhere. The Lib Dem candidate unilaterally stood down and endorsed Duffield so as not to split the Remain vote, though he was promptly replaced by the Lib Dem leadership.

达菲尔德保住席位的一个主要原因是,工党拥有一个脆弱但有效的反托利的共同阵线的支持。其他地方工党获胜希望渺茫,这个共同阵线正好平衡了这一消极因素。为了不分裂留欧派的选票,自由民主党候选人单方面退出并支持Duffield,尽管他很快被自由民主党领导层取代。

The Greens, meanwhile, did not stand – and a booth in Canterbury high street was selling blue badges with the message “Tories for Rosie.”

​与此同时,绿党没有站起来,坎特伯雷大街的一个摊位上正在出售印有“托利党支持罗西”字样的蓝色徽章。

When Duffield, a former assistant teacher and single mother, first won the seat by 187 votes in 2017, ending no less than 185 years of uninterrupted Tory representation, the Tories and the media blamed the student vote.

当前助理教师、单身母亲达菲尔德在2017年首次以187票的优势赢得席位,终结了保守党1985年开始的不间断的代表权,而保守党和媒体却指责学生参与投票。

But while the city does have two big universities and the campus of a third, this has been true for decades.

不过,尽管该市确实有两所大大学,还有第三所大学的分校,但几十年来情况一直如此。



I asked Mike Bland, campaign coordinator for Duffield, why she had won when so many of her fellow Labour MPs had lost. He said that Labour had lost support in the Leave-voting estates, but “voters stayed home and did not switch to the Tories.”

我问达菲尔德竞选协调员迈克·布兰德,为什么她赢了,而她的许多工党同僚都输了。他说,工党已经失去了在休假投票区的支持,其实“选民留在家里,没有转向保守党”

Duffield is popular and had distanced herself from Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership – distanced herself so far as to attract furious denunciations from some leaders of the local party.

达菲尔德很受欢迎,她与杰里米·科尔宾和工党领导层保持了距离,甚至引来了当地一些领导人的强烈谴责。

In the constituency there had been a small Remain majority in the referendum, and Duffield was vocally pro-Remain. This was important because in other constituencies, Labour’s suicidal policy of being somewhere in the middle between Leave and Remain managed to alienate both sides, as it was always likely to do.

在公投的选民中留任者占多数,而达菲尔德在声音上支持留任。这一点很重要,因为在其他选区,工党采取自取灭亡的政策介于离开和留任之间徘徊,从而疏远了双方,两边都不讨好。

More Labour voters switched to the other Remain parties – often in Leave majority areas – than Labour Leave voters switched to the Tories. For all Boris Johnson’s triumphalism, the overall Tory share of the vote only increased by two per cent.

更多的工党选民转向其他留任党(通常是在左翼占多数的地区),而不是工党的左翼选民转向保守党。尽管鲍里斯·约翰逊(Boris Johnson)的胜利主义者众多,但保守党在总选票中所占份额仅增加了2%。

Of course, it’s easy to say what the Labour party should have done if it was less divided. Its ambivalent Brexit policy was a compromise between factions, however toxic it was likely to prove to the electorate as a whole. But the divisions were real, so the only real solution for Labour was to avoid a general election until Brexit was decided one way or another.

当然,如果工党不那么摇摆不定的话,就可以坚定的说它应该做些什么。它的矛盾政策是派系之间的妥协,然而它很可能会对选民产生整体性的毒害。但是分歧是真实的,所以真正的解决办法是先不要大选,直到英国脱欧这件事尘埃落定。

Numerous Labour and Lib Dem leaders are now saying how much they opposed a general election, but their opposition, if it existed at the time, was largely invisible.

许多工党和自由民主党领导人现在都在说他们反对大选,但是他们的反对声音,如果当时说出的话,在很大程度上是无效的。



Jeremy Corbyn is not often compared to Hillary Clinton, but some of their mistakes were similar. Both wasted the energies of enthusiastic supporters trying to win opposition-held constituencies and states when they should have been fighting desperately to defend their own political bases.

杰里米·科尔宾并不经常被比作希拉里·克林顿,但他们的一些错误是相似的。两人都浪费了热情支持者的精力,他们本应拼命捍卫自己的政治基础,却试图赢得反对派控制的选区和州的支持。

Populist nationalist leaders are popping up all over the world. Johnson is only the British iteration of this global trend. All have authoritarian instincts to which they give rein as far as political circumstances allow.

民粹主义民族主义领袖在世界各地涌现。约翰逊只是这一全球趋势的英国版。在政治环境允许的范围内,所有人都有自己的统治本能。

Ominously for Britain, the populist nationalist wave is not receding. And once they’ve won it, few, if any, of these leaders have lost their grip on power.

对英国来说,不祥的是,民粹主义民族主义浪潮并未消退。一旦他们赢了,这些领导人就一直占据领导地位。