‘What have we done?’: six years on, UK counts the cost of Brexit
-Sectors from fishing to aviation, farming to science report being bogged down in red tape, struggling to recruit staff and racking up losses for the first time

“我们都做了什么？”：六年过去了，英国开始计算脱欧的成本
——从渔业到航空，从农业到科学等行业都陷入了繁琐手续，招聘人员困难重重，首次出现了亏损


(Lorries queueing on the A20 on their way to Dover, in April.)

（4月，开往多佛的卡车在A20公路上排队等候。）
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On 23 June 2016, Geoffrey Betts, the managing director of a small office supplies business in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, had high hopes for his firm, and the British economy, when he voted for Brexit.

2016年6月23日，白金汉郡马洛一家小型办公用品公司的董事总经理杰弗里·贝茨投票支持脱欧，当时他对公司和英国经济寄予了很高的希望。

“I thought we would be like … ‘here we go, here we go. We are going to become the most competitive country in Europe and we are going to be encouraging business.’ Now I think: ‘What have we done?’”

“我以为我们会像……‘好了，好了。我们将成为欧洲最具竞争力的国家，我们将鼓励商业发展。’可现在我想：‘我们都做了什么？’”

His firm, Stewart Superior, has survived, but not without major restructuring and huge efforts to get around obstacles that Brexit has put in the way of the export side of the business.

他的公司Stewart Superior幸存了下来，但进行了重大重组，也付出了巨大努力来绕过英国脱欧给该公司出口业务带来的障碍。

In late 2020 Betts decided there was no option but to set up a depot inside the EU single market – in the Netherlands – at considerable expense, to avoid costly delays in transit, mountains of Brexit-related paperwork at the border, and VAT issues when sending goods to customers on the continent.

2020年底，贝茨公司决定，除了在欧盟单一市场内（荷兰）建立一个仓库之外，别无选择。为了避免昂贵的运输延误、边境上堆积如山的英国脱欧相关手续，以及向欧洲大陆的客户发送货物时的增值税问题，贝茨公司付出了相当大的代价。

The switch means that, 18 months on, he has retained a decent slice of trade with customers inside the EU. But because his goods are now distributed from the Dutch depot, tax revenues which would have gone to the UK exchequer now go to the Dutch government instead. Jobs have been created in Holland, not here. Goods that would have been transported from the UK – and created work and employment here – are instead sent direct from the Netherlands to EU destinations, including Ireland.

这一转变意味着，18个月以来，他还保留了与欧盟内部客户的相当一部分贸易。但由于他的货物现在是从荷兰仓库分发的，税收收入本应进入英国财政部，现在却进入了荷兰政府。工作岗位是在荷兰创造的，而不是在这里。原本从英国运输的商品——在这里创造了工作岗位和就业机会——却改从荷兰直接运往包括爱尔兰在内的欧盟目的地。

Last year, with Covid adding to its problems, Stewart Superior lost money for the first time in 20 years.

去年，随着新冠肺炎的出现，Stewart Superior 20年来首次出现亏损。

Betts is “very disappointed” with the UK government. “We are not shipping anything like the amount we were. As a country, we were supposed to be out there trading with the world and yet nothing has happened except we have got a load more paperwork and we have lost lots of our business. It is completely bonkers.”

贝茨对英国政府“非常失望”。他说：“我们现在的出货量与过去不同。作为一个国家，我们本应该与世界进行贸易，然而除了更多的手续，我们失去了很多生意之外，什么都没有发生。这完全是疯了。”

Asked whether, with hindsight, he would vote Leave if there was a referendum today, Betts says: “I think on the basis of what has happened, I would say No.”

当被问及如果今天举行公投，他是否会投脱欧票时，贝茨说：“我认为基于已经发生的事情，我会说不会。”

Stewart Superior is one of several small businesses the Observer has been tracking since Boris Johnson finally settled on a hard Brexit and signed a free trade agreement which came into force in January 2021.

自鲍里斯·约翰逊最终决定硬脱欧并签署自2021年1月生效的自由贸易协定以来，《观察家报》一直在跟踪几家小企业，Stewart Superior就是其中之一。
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Others report the same frustrations. Markets for their goods are there, they say, with potential customers aplenty in the EU. But new obstacles to trade, and hidden costs for customers (particularly demands for VAT on delivery to their doors), as well as the soaring costs of imports caused in part by the post-Brexit duation of sterling, mean that in many cases it is simply not worth accessing them.

其他人也报告了同样的挫折。他们说，他们的商品市场在那里，潜在客户在欧盟。但新的贸易障碍、客户的隐性成本（尤其是送货上门的增值税要求），以及英国脱欧后英镑贬值部分导致的进口成本飙升，意味着在许多情况下，这些商品根本不值得购买。

Unless – that is – companies open a branch back inside the same single market the UK left 18 months ago.

除非——也就是说——企业重新在英国18个月前离开的单一市场开设分支机构。

Gyr King, chief executive of King & McGaw, a firm with turnover of more than £10m, which sells fine art prints online from Newhaven, on the south coast, says he has all but stopped exporting to the EU because Brexit-related costs and bureaucracy make it uneconomic.

营业额超过1000万英镑的King & McGaw公司的首席执行官吉尔·金表示，他几乎已经停止向欧盟出口艺术品，因为与英国脱欧相关的成本和官僚主义使出口变得不经济。该公司在英国南部海岸的纽黑文销售精美的版画。

In some cases he has dispatched artworks to EU destinations only to have them sent back because customers have refused to pay VAT on arrival. For legal reasons, the same goods have had to be sent on another slow and costly journey back to the UK, meaning a big bill landing on King’s desk for an unsold, bespoke item.

在某些情况下，他曾将艺术品送到欧盟目的地，结果却被退回，因为客户拒绝在到达时支付增值税。出于法律原因，同样的商品不得不再次经过漫长而昂贵的旅程运回英国，这意味着一大笔未售出的定制商品账单落在了金的桌子上。

In King’s view, Johnson’s hard Brexit defies one basic rule of economics. “If you can’t ship your goods into the biggest market on your doorstep, you have got to be shooting yourself in the foot,” he says.

在金看来，约翰逊的硬退欧违背了经济学的一个基本规则。他说：“如果你不能把商品运到家门口最大的市场了，那你就是搬起石头砸自己的脚。”

Leaving the EU has also made it far more difficult to recruit the skilled workers he needs, because the UK no longer enjoys the benefits of free movement of labour. “Brexit has clearly not helped because the reservoir from which we are drawing is much smaller,” he says.

脱欧还大大增加了英国招聘所需熟练工人的难度，因为英国不再享受劳动力自由流动的好处。他表示：“英国脱欧显然没有帮助，因为我们的‘蓄水池’要小得多。”

Six years after the referendum which took the UK out of the EU, the economic case for Brexit is proving increasingly difficult for its supporters – including inside the Conservative party – to make.

在英国脱欧公投六年后，英国脱欧的经济理由越来越难以让其支持者（包括保守党内部的支持者）信服。

Most of the trade deals with non-EU countries that the UK has signed have been small in their economic effect, and have merely been “rolled over” from identical ones when we were an EU member. Even Jacob Rees-Mogg, the minister for Brexit opportunities, has stopped talking about Brexit and the UK economy, and instead focuses on what he says is the democratic dividend, the winning back of control, and the return of sovereignty. That is not surprising because day by day the economic data is piling up showing the harm that leaving the EU is doing to the nation’s finances.

英国与非欧盟国家签署的大多数贸易协议在经济上的影响都很小，只是与我们还是欧盟成员国时的相同协议“延期”而已。就连负责英国脱欧机遇的大臣雅各布·里斯-莫格也不再谈论英国脱欧和英国经济了，而是专注于他所说的民主红利、夺回控制权和主权的回归。这并不奇怪，因为每天都有经济数据堆积起来，显示出脱欧对英国财政造成的伤害。

Johnson and the Vote Leave campaign promised in 2016 that £350m a month would flow back from Brussels because we would stop contributing to EU coffers.

约翰逊和脱欧阵营在2016年承诺，每个月将有3.5亿英镑从布鲁塞尔回流，因为我们将停止向欧盟提供资金。

The impression was that there would be no downside. We would thrive outside Europe’s bureaucracy which was strangling our companies with red tape. The huge benefits of the single market – trading freely across borders, with common standards – were never highlighted by Vote Leave, and rarely by the crudely alarmist Remain camp, either.

给人的印象是不会有任何负面影响。我们将在欧洲官僚主义之外茁壮成长，欧洲的官僚主义用繁琐手续扼杀了我们的公司。单一市场的巨大好处——以共同标准进行跨境自由交易——从来没有被脱欧阵营强调过，也很少被极端危言耸听的留欧阵营强调过。

Only now, with the worst of the pandemic (probably) behind us, and ministers unable to blame Covid, is Brexit reality being laid bare.

直到现在，随着疫情最严重的时期（可能）过去了，大臣们无法甩锅新冠肺炎了，英国脱欧的现实才开始暴露无遗。
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Next year the OECD calculates that the UK will record the lowest growth in the G20 with the exception of Russia whose economy is being drained by its war on Ukraine.

经合组织估计，明年英国将录得20国集团中除俄罗斯以外的最低增速——俄罗斯的经济正因对乌克兰的战争而枯竭。

The Office for Budget Responsibility says Brexit will have a long-term effect of cutting UK GDP by a hefty 4%, an estimate unchanged since early 2020. The Financial Times says such a decline amounts to £100bn in lost output, and £40bn less revenue to the Treasury a year. The UK is now behind all the other G7 nations in the pace of its recovery from the pandemic, with exports by UK small businesses to the EU down significantly.

预算责任办公室表示，英国脱欧将导致英国国内生产总值大幅下降4%，这一估计自2020年初以来没有变化。英国《金融时报》表示，这种下降相当于每年损失1000亿英镑的产出，以及400亿英镑的财政收入。英国从疫情中复苏的步伐现在落后于其他七国集团国家，英国小企业对欧盟的出口大幅下降。

Jonathan Haskel, a member of the Bank of England’s nine-member monetary policy committee, said on Friday that Brexit was “disconnecting the UK from its main trading partners” in a clear example of de-globalisation. An expert at Imperial College on ways to improve productivity, Haskel warned in 2019 that British business investment would likely be weak for several years because of uncertainty lixed to Brexit.

英国央行货币政策委员会9名成员之一乔纳森·哈斯克尔上周五表示，英国脱欧正“使英国与其主要贸易伙伴脱钩”，这是去全球化的一个明显例子。哈斯克尔是帝国理工学院研究如何提高生产率的专家，他在2019年警告称，由于与英国脱欧有关的不确定性，英国商业投资可能会在未来几年保持疲弱。

Figures from the Centre for European Reform show that the Brexit vote has already depressed economic growth. The independent thinktank said that by the end of last year the economy was 5% – or £31bn – smaller than if the UK had stayed in the EU. Faced with all this, arch-Brexiters are increasingly turning on Johnson. They don’t admit Brexit was a mistake but say it has not yet been made to work.

欧洲改革中心的数据显示，英国脱欧公投已经抑制了经济增长。该独立智库表示，到去年年底，英国经济总量减少了5%，即310亿英镑，比英国留在欧盟时还要少。面对这一切，极端脱欧派越来越多地把矛头指向约翰逊。他们不承认脱欧是一个错误，而是说政府至今未能让脱欧发挥作用。

Richard Tice, the leader of Reform UK, successor to the Brexit party, told the Observer that the grand ideal was still a good one. “Brexit has given us our sovereignty back, so we can make our own laws, and control our money and borders and not be subject to the European Court of Justice.”

英国改革党领导人、脱欧党继任者理查德·泰斯告诉《观察家报》，宏伟的理想仍然是好的理想。“脱欧把我们的主权还给了我们，所以我们可以制定自己的法律，控制我们的资金和边境，而不受欧洲法院的约束。”

It was just that the rich fruits of Brexit were not yet there to savour because “in its utter incompetence, the Tory government has failed to take much advantage so far, with a few exceptions such as being able to do our own earlier vaccine rollout and some trade deals”.

只是英国脱欧的丰硕成果还没有展现出来，因为“保守党政府完全无能，迄今未能充分利用这一优势，只有少数特例，比如能够尽早推出我们自己的疫苗，以及达成一些贸易协议”。

Tory defeats in Thursday’s Tiverton and Honiton and Wakefield byelections suggest that behind the “red wall” and “blue wall” the electoral benefits of saying Johnson “got Brexit done” are not what they were.

保守党在周四的蒂弗顿、霍尼顿和韦克菲尔德补选中的失败表明，在“红墙”和“蓝墙”背后，说约翰逊“完成了英国脱欧”的选举好处已经不再是以前那样了。

In the south-west seat many farmers believed promises on Brexit had been betrayed. There was a sense of rural revolt. Fertiliser and feed prices have soared recently, and payment systems for farmers are mired in confusion.

在西南部的议会席位上，许多农民认为英国脱欧的承诺遭到了背叛。有一种农村反叛的感觉。最近，化肥和饲料价格大幅上涨，农民支付制度也陷入混乱。
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A constituency steeped in West Country Euroscepticism voted for a profoundly pro-EU party, the Liberal Democrats, sending a tremor through the Conservative party. Other sectors harbour feelings of Brexit betrayal, as the memories of Covid lockdowns fade.

一个深受西欧欧洲怀疑主义影响的选区把票投给了一个非常亲欧盟的政党——自由民主党，这在保守党内部引起了震动。随着新冠肺炎封锁的记忆逐渐淡去，其他行业也有被英国脱欧背叛的感觉。

The fishing industry – promised a new lease of life out of the EU – is on the verge of crisis, with rising fuel costs making it almost uneconomic to catch fish, particularly as exporting to the EU is now so burdensome. Trawler crew working on a share of profits now earn less than £3 an hour after diesel is paid for, despite fish being at record prices.

原本有望脱离欧盟获得新生的捕鱼业正处于危机边缘，不断上涨的燃料成本使捕鱼业几乎失去了经济效益，尤其是在向欧盟出口鱼类的负担如此沉重的情况下。尽管鱼的价格创下了历史新高，但拖网渔船的船员在支付柴油后每小时的利润还不到3英镑。

Sarah Ready of the New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association, whose boats are under 10 metres long, said red tape had been increasing since the Brexit vote, and they now faced extra hurdles selling their catches.

Sarah Ready of the New Under Ten渔民协会（该协会的渔船长不到10米）的萨拉·瑞德说，自英国脱欧公投以来，官僚主义越来越多，他们现在在出售渔获物方面面临额外的障碍。

Brexit was not supposed to be this way. “Some of the requirements have certainly come since Brexit,” she said. “I think Brexit was a very nasty divorce between us and Europe and obviously they’re not going to make it easy for us on any manner of things.” Paperwork relating to health and hygiene, EU import rules and other monitoring requirements had grown dramatically.

英国脱欧不应该是这样的。她说：“有些要求肯定是英国脱欧后提出的。我认为英国脱欧是我们和欧洲之间非常肮脏的离婚，很明显，他们在任何方面都不会让我们轻松。”与健康和卫生、欧盟进口规则和其他监测要求有关的书面手续已经急剧增加。

Rees-Mogg said last week he had no intention of monitoring the economic effects of Brexit. “I’m not going to make those sorts of assessments because lots were made before the referendum and they are all bilge,” he said.

里斯-莫格上周表示，他无意监控英国脱欧的经济影响。他说：“我不会做出这样的评估，因为在公投之前已经做了很多评估，但它们都是无用的。”

Ministers cannot hide reality much longer. What Rees-Mogg was referring to were predictions. Now we have facts, evidence of Brexit affecting people’s lives. Those flying off on holiday can see queues at airports, longer than before Brexit, and ask: why?

大臣们无法再隐瞒现实了——里斯-莫格指的是预测。现在我们有了脱欧影响人们生活的事实和证据。那些乘飞机去度假的人可以看到机场前排起的长队，比英国脱欧前还要长，他们会问：为什么？

Last week the chief executive of easyJet, Johan Lundgren, contradicted claims by the aviation minister Robert Courts that it was “not likely” Brexit had caused staff shortages which have led to disruption at airports. Lundgren countered that 8,000 job applications from EU citizens had been rejected by his firm because candidates did not have permission to work in the UK.

上周，易捷航空首席执行官约翰·朗格伦反驳了航空部长罗伯特·考特的说法，后者称英国脱欧“不太可能”导致员工短缺，从而导致机场中断。朗格伦反驳称，他的公司拒绝了8000名欧盟公民的工作申请，原因是申请人没有在英国工作的许可。

“The pool of people is smaller, it’s just maths,” Lundgren said. “We have had to turn down a huge number of EU nationals because of Brexit. Pre-pandemic we would have turned down 2-2.5% because of nationality issues. Now it’s 35-40%.”

“人数少了，这只是数学问题，”朗格伦说。“因为英国脱欧，我们不得不拒绝了大量的欧盟公民。在大流行之前，由于国籍问题，我们可能会拒绝2% - 2.5%。而现在是35 - 40%。”

The permanent state of war Johnson’s government maintains with the EU – blaming it for problems caused by the very Brexit deal he negotiated – is making things even worse.

约翰逊政府与欧盟保持的永久战争状态——将他谈判达成的英国脱欧协议引发的问题归咎于欧盟——正在使情况变得更糟。

Take UK science. When the UK was in the EU we played a leading role in the Horizon scheme funding research projects across Europe. We provided more lead researchers than any other European nation and received the second largest funding of any member country.

以英国科学界为例。当英国还在欧盟的时候，我们在资助欧洲研究项目的“地平线”项目中发挥了领导作用。我们提供了比任何其他欧洲国家都多的主要研究人员，并获得了所有成员国中第二大的资助。

After Brexit, there was a provisional deal for the UK to continue in Horizon – which backs projects from particle physics to vaccine research – as an associated nation. The UK would pay £15bn into the scheme over seven years while its scientists could still bid for Horizon funding.

英国脱欧后，有一项临时协议让英国继续作为一个联合国家参与“地平线”项目（该项目支持从粒子物理到疫苗研究的各种项目）。英国将在未来7年内向该计划支付150亿英镑，而英国科学家仍可以申请地平线项目的资助。

Then came the dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol, an issue that so infuriated the EU it has refused to ratify Britain’s associate membership of the €95bn scheme. Those UK scientists who have received recent grants have been told they must move to an EU country to retain access to funds. Those affected include Cambridge astronomer Nicholas Walton who relinquished leadership of a €2.8m star-mapping project to a colleague in the Netherlands, while Carsten Welsch, a Liverpool University physicist, winner of a €2.6m Horizon grant for plasma research, has been told either to move to the EU or hand over leadership to an EU institution – a situation he describes as “heartbreaking”.

随后发生了围绕《北爱尔兰协议》的争端，这一问题激怒了欧盟，以至于欧盟拒绝批准英国成为950亿欧元计划的准成员国。那些最近获得资助的英国科学家被告知，他们必须搬到一个欧盟国家，以保留获得资助的机会。受到影响的包括剑桥大学天文学家尼古拉斯·沃尔顿，他将一项280万欧元的恒星测绘项目的领导地位让给了荷兰的一位同事；而利物浦大学物理学家卡斯滕·韦尔奇，获得了260万欧元的“地平线”等离子体研究资助，被告知要么搬到欧盟，要么将领导地位移交给欧盟机构——他形容这种情况“令人心碎”。

The government is working on a plan that would make up for some of the funding lost if our association with Horizon breaks down, as expected. The result will be less cash for UK science, loss of partnerships with the best European scientists, and a reduced international reputation for our researchers.

政府正在制定一项计划，如果我们与“地平线”的合作如预期的那样破裂，该计划将弥补一些资金损失。其结果将是英国科学的资金减少，失去与欧洲最优秀科学家的合作伙伴关系，以及我们研究人员的国际声誉下降。

Another small UK business which the Observer has followed since January last year sells packaging and point-of-sale marketing displays in this country and the EU. Based in Ely, Cambridge shire, it employs a few dozen people. Its managing director Andrew Moss, like Geoffrey Betts, has gone to hell and back trying to find ways to survive Brexit. He too has set up a distribution depot in the Netherlands. Also like Betts he feels he has got around Brexit’s blockages, but at a huge cost.

《观察家报》从去年1月开始跟踪的另一家英国小企业，在英国和欧盟销售包装和销售点营销显示器。总部位于剑桥郡伊利，有几十名员工。该公司董事总经理安德鲁·莫斯和杰弗里·贝茨一样，已经历经万难，试图找到在英国脱欧后生存下来的方法。他也在荷兰建立了一个配送仓库。和贝茨一样，他也觉得自己绕过了英国脱欧的障碍，但付出了巨大的代价。

“Our growth stopped five years ago,” says Moss. “70% of our turnover was international before Brexit. It went from 70% to 50% to 30%. We would be twice the size we are now if it were not for Brexit.”

莫斯说：“我们的增长在五年前就停止了。在英国脱欧之前，我们70%的营业额来自国际市场。从70%到50%再到30%。要是没有英国脱欧，我们今天的规模本会是现在的两倍。”