Collapsing public support suggests Brexit is anything but done
-Most people think Brexit has gone badly, a UK survey finds, and Johnson has left behind a mess of problems for a new PM

公众支持率的崩溃表明，英国脱欧根本没有完成
——英国一项调查发现，大多数人认为英国脱欧发展得很糟糕，约翰逊给新首相留下了一堆烂摊子
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处



(Boris Johnson’s critics say his deal with the EU did not achieve the ‘stability and certainty’ he claimed it would.)

（鲍里斯·约翰逊的批评者称，他与欧盟的协议并没有实现他所宣称的“稳定和确定性”。）
新闻：

The mantra right up to the grisly end was that he had got Brexit “done”.

直到可怕的结尾，他的口头禅都是：他已经“完成”了英国脱欧。

Boris Johnson’s apparent double miracle was to break the parliamentary impasse that tormented his predecessor Theresa May when trying to pass her withdrawal agreement and then to successfully negotiate a trade deal with the EU in the following 10 months.

鲍里斯·约翰逊明显的“双重奇迹”，是打破了困扰他的前任特蕾莎·梅的议会僵局，当时特蕾莎·梅先是试图通过她的脱欧协议，然后在接下来的10个月里成功地与欧盟谈判达成一项贸易协议。

“This deal means a new stability and a new certainty in what has sometimes been a fractious and difficult relationship,” Johnson had said on Christmas Eve 2020 as the ink was drying on the new trade agreement.

2020年圣诞前夕，约翰逊在新贸易协定墨迹渐干之际表示：“该协议意味着在有时难以处理的关系中的一种新的稳定性和新的确定性。”

Johnson certainly achieved a political feat in uniting his party after removing May from office and then forming an unlikely electoral alliance in the wider country – despite misleading the Queen, in the opinion of a Scottish court, as he sought to threaten recalcitrant MPs with a no-deal exit back in the dark days of 2019.

以及在将梅赶下首相宝座之后，约翰逊在更大范围内组建了一个不太可能实现的选举联盟，这无疑是一项政治壮举——尽管在苏格兰法院看来，他误导了女王，因为在2019年黑暗的日子里，他曾试图用无协议脱欧来威胁顽固的议员。

But recent polling suggests support for Brexit in the UK has collapsed – and the outgoing prime minister’s critics might confidently argue today that Johnson leaves a mess of issues behind rather than the “certainty and stability” that he claimed to have secured 18 months ago.

但最近的民调显示，英国民众对脱欧的支持已经崩溃——这位即将离任的首相的批评者今天可能会自信地说，约翰逊留下了一大堆问题，而不是他18个月前宣称的“确定性和稳定性”。

For all of the talk in 2019 of having struck a great deal, the government has in recent weeks threatened to unilaterally rip up a hard won and crucial agreement over the post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland if the EU does not agree to a fundamental overhaul – despite the Conservative manifesto on which Johnson formed his government committing to no renegotiations.

尽管2019年各方都在谈论已经达成了一项伟大的协议，但政府最近几周威胁称，如果欧盟不同意进行根本改革，就会单方面撕毁来之不易的、至关重要的脱欧后北爱尔兰安排协议——尽管约翰逊组建政府时的保守党宣言承诺不会重新谈判。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


The problem Johnson has found is that the withdrawal agreement has – as the government’s own impact assessment had said it would at the time, along with everyone else who understood the deal – drawn a regulatory border down the Irish Sea, making it more expensive to import from Britain to Northern Ireland.

约翰逊发现的问题是，脱欧协议——正如政府自己的影响评估，以及所有理解该协议的人当时所说的那样——划定了爱尔兰海的监管边界，使从英国进口到北爱尔兰的成本更高了。

May, after all, had rejected the approach taken by Johnson largely on constitutional grounds, saying to the House of Commons that no British prime minister could consider drawing borders between the four nations of the UK. The Democratic unxist party agreed then with that position, as it does today. It is why it is refusing to allow power-sharing institutions to function in Northern Ireland.

毕竟，梅当时在很大程度上是以宪法为由拒绝了约翰逊的做法，她对下议院表示，没有哪个英国首相会考虑在英国的四个国家之间划定边界。民主统一党当时同意这一立场，今天也是如此。这就是为什么它拒绝让权力分享机构在北爱尔兰运作的原因。

Meanwhile, the trade deal has left Britain’s fishing communities screaming betrayal, unhappy with their paltry gains and facing expensive barriers to export what they have caught. The arrangements are simultaneously a cause of constant friction with the French government, at a time when cooperation on security between the two big beasts of European defence arguably could not be more important.

与此同时，该贸易协议让英国的渔业社区尖叫着“遭到了背叛”，他们对微薄的收益并面临着昂贵的渔获出口壁垒感到不满。在英法这两个欧洲防务巨擘之间的安全合作可以说是再重要不过的当下，这些安排也是与法国政府不断发生摩擦的原因。

There has been a “steep decline” in the number of trading relationships Britain has with the EU as small businesses have become bogged down in the new red tape, according to a study by the London School of Economics. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the government spending watchdog, said earlier this year that Brexit “may have been a factor” in the UK lagging behind all other G7 economies in its post-pandemic recovery.

伦敦经济学院的一项研究显示，英国与欧盟的贸易关系数量“急剧下降”，因为小企业陷入了新的繁琐程序。英国预算责任办公室（政府支出监管机构）今年早些时候表示，英国脱欧“可能是”英国在大流行后复苏方面落后于其他七国集团经济体的一个因素。

But most worrying of all for those who are protective of Johnson’s Brexit legacy is the changing face of public opinion. The latest YouGov poll has found that every region of the UK now believes Brexit was an error, with 55% of those questioned believing that Brexit has gone badly compared with 33% who say it has gone well.

但对于那些捍卫约翰逊脱欧遗产的人来说，最令人担忧的是公众舆论的变化。最新的舆观民意调查发现，现在英国的每个地区都认为脱欧是一个错误，55%的受访者认为脱欧很糟糕，33%的人认为脱欧很好。

Few in Westminster, beyond the Liberal Democrats, are suggesting that the UK is poised to rejoin the EU. But the very manner in which Brexit was “done” appears to have left it brittle, the polls suggest. Britain’s relationship with the 27 EU member states remains a stubbornly open question. For those who believe that Britain’s destiny remains as free-wheeling country outside the EU’s single market and customs unx, there can be little confidence that anything on that front has been settled.

除了自由民主党，英国议会中几乎没有人暗示英国准备重新加入欧盟。但民调显示，英国脱欧的“完成”方式似乎让它变得脆弱了。英国与27个欧盟成员国的关系仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。对于那些认为英国的命运仍将是欧盟单一市场和关税同盟之外的自由国家的人来说，几乎没有信心认为这方面的任何问题已经得到解决。

The payoff for this autonomy from the EU’s rules and regulations was to be a welter of trade deals around the world that offered greater access for British goods in emerging markets, along with a bonfire of regulations in the City of London that would make it more competitive.

这种不受欧盟规章制度约束的回报是，世界各地的贸易协定纷繁复杂，为英国商品进入新兴市场提供了更大的渠道，同时伦敦金融城出台了大量规章制度，使其更具竞争力。

But such has been the lack of progress on such aims that Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former Commons leader, felt forced during Johnson’s prolonged fight to stay in Downing Street to warn Tory MPs thinking of voting no confidence that Brexit might yet be thwarted. Perhaps more significantly, the lack of a Brexit dividend since 23 June 2016 has led others sympathetic to Brexit to reconsider whether the deals struck really are optimal. Tory MEP Dan Hannan mused recently that retaining membership of the single market may have been a better option.

但由于在这些目标上缺乏进展，在约翰逊长期争取留在唐宁街的过程中，前下议院领袖雅各布·里斯-莫格感到被迫警告那些考虑投不信任票的保守党议员，英国脱欧可能会遭到挫败。或许更重要的是，自2016年6月23日以来，英国脱欧没有带来红利，这导致其他支持英国脱欧的人重新考虑达成的协议是否真的是最优的。保守党欧洲议会议员丹·汉南最近深思熟虑地表示，保留单一市场成员国身份可能是一个更好的选择。

Those who worked alongside Johnson in government, and in opposition to him at the negotiating table, point to the cause of this mess of issues being not only the substance of what was negotiated but that it was done with a misplaced boosterism.

那些曾在政府中与约翰逊共事，并在谈判桌上反对他的人指出，造成这一混乱局面的原因不仅在于谈判的实质内容，而且在于谈判过程中出现了错误的支持主义。

Georg Riekeles, diplomatic adviser to the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, during the withdrawal agreement and trade negotiations, said Johnson never appeared on top of the details but his decision to disavow the arrangements for Northern Ireland so soon after signing the agreement them astonished even the hardest-nosed officials in Brussels.

在脱欧协议和贸易谈判期间，欧盟首席谈判代表米歇尔·巴尼耶的外交顾问格奥尔格·里克尔斯表示，约翰逊从来没有了解过细节，但他在签署协议后这么快就决定否认对北爱尔兰的安排，就连布鲁塞尔最强硬的官员也感到震惊。

“He certainly pushed the boundaries of what one could expect a British prime minister to do very, very far,” Riekeles said. “He negotiated, signed an international agreement and had the House of Commons ratify it one day, only to walk back on it the next.”

里克尔斯说：“他确实把人们对英国首相的期望推到了非常、非常低的程度。他进行谈判，签署了一项国际协议，并让下议院批准了它，但第二天他又背弃了它。”

Riekeles added: “If the obxtive was to satisfy an important part of the Conservative party and to tick boxes in terms of Brexit rhetoric, then of course they got that. But not if the aim was to have the best possible relations with the EU and properly get Brexit done – get it done and start a constructive relationship where one works together in a neighbourly way, to address common and global problems. Instead, relations are very complicated, and the cost of that is bigger for the UK than the EU.”

里克尔斯补充说：“如果他们的目标是满足保守党的一个重要组成部分，并在脱欧的言论上打上标记，那么他们当然做到了。但如果目标是与欧盟保持最好的关系，妥善解决英国脱欧问题，那就不是这样了——解决好这件事，开启建设性的关系，以睦邻方式合作，解决共同的全球性问题。相反，双方关系非常复杂，并且英国为此付出的代价比欧盟更大。”

In his book, Chief of Staff: Notes from Downing Street, the former Tory MP Gavin Barwell, who led May’s office during her tortuous parallel negotiations with the EU and the mutinous cabinet, noted that Johnson was the least willing to compromise of all the Brexiters and refused to acknowledge the difficult choices that had to be made over Northern Ireland’s special circumstances, describing the problem as the “tail wagging the dog”.

前保守党议员加文·巴韦尔在其《幕僚长：唐宁街的记录》一书中指出，在所有脱欧派中，约翰逊是最不愿意妥协的，并拒绝承认在北爱尔兰的特殊情况下必须做出的艰难选择，他将这个问题描述为“主次颠倒”。巴韦尔曾在梅与欧盟和叛变内阁的艰难平行谈判中领导过她的办公室。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Barwell told the Guardian that Johnson had won over MPs for his solution to Northern Ireland due to “brazenness and the desperation of people in parliament to find a way out of the deadlock” but that he would be “surprised” if the type of relationship Johnson designed with the EU would last.

巴维尔告诉《卫报》，约翰逊已经赢得了议员们对他的北爱尔兰解决方案的支持，因为“议会中的人无耻而绝望地想要找到打破僵局的方法”，但如果约翰逊设计的与欧盟的这种关系能够持续下去，他会感到“惊讶”。

“From a Brexiter point of view, the thing that should worry them is that this deal has not settled the argument in this country about what sort of relationship with Europe we want,” Barwell said. “If you are a Brexiter, you should be trying do something that a sufficient proportion of the population accepted so that there was no question of reopening the question. I would be surprised if we rejoined in the medium term but I would be equally surprised if a future government didn’t negotiate a closer deal.”

巴维尔说：“从脱欧派的角度来看，他们应该担心的是，这项协议没有解决这个国家关于我们希望与欧洲建立什么样的关系的争论。如果你是脱欧派，你应该尝试做一些让足够多的人接受的事情，这样就不会有重新讨论这个问题的问题了。如果我们在中期重新加入欧盟，我会感到惊讶，但如果未来的政府没有通过谈判达成一项更紧密的协议，我会同样感到惊讶。”

Brexit, he suggested, is far from done.

他说，英国脱欧远未完成。