经济学人下载:圣诞节前英国的噩梦(1)

Leaders
来源于《社论》版块

Britain’s nightmare before Christmas
圣诞节前英国的噩梦

A divided country faces an election that will tear it still further apart
一个分裂的国家面临着一场将进一步分裂的选举

British voters keep being called to the polls—and each time the options before them are worse. Labour and the Conservatives, once parties of the centre-left and -right, have steadily grown further apart in the three elections of the past four years. Next week voters face their starkest choice yet, between Boris Johnson, whose Tories promise a hard Brexit, and Jeremy Corbyn, whose Labour Party plans to “rewrite the rules of the economy” along radical socialist lines. Mr Johnson runs the most unpopular new government on record; Mr Corbyn is the most unpopular leader of the opposition. On Friday the 13th, unlucky Britons will wake to find one of these horrors in charge.
英国选民不断被召集到投票站，但每次他们面前的选择都更糟糕。工党和保守党曾经是中左翼和右翼政党，但在过去四年的三次选举中，两党间的分歧越来越大。下周，选民将面临迄今为止最严峻的选择：承诺“硬脱欧”的保守党代表鲍里斯•约翰逊，和计划沿着激进的社会主义路线“改写经济规则”的工党代表杰里米·科尔宾。约翰逊先生领导着有史以来最不受欢迎的新政府；而科尔宾是反对党中最不受欢迎的领导人。在13号星期五，不幸的英国人将会清醒地发现这些恐怖的事情总有一件会发生。

At the last election, two years and a political era ago, we regretted the drift to the extremes. Today’s manifestos go a lot further. In 2017 Labour was on the left of the European mainstream. Today it would seize 10% of large firms’ equity, to be held in funds paying out mostly to the exchequer rather than to the workers who are meant to be the beneficiaries. It would phase in a fourday week, supposedly with no loss of pay. The list of industries to be nationalised seems only to grow. Drug patents could be forcibly licensed. The bill for a rapid increase in spending would fall on the rich and companies, whose tax burden would go from the lowest in the G7 to the highest. It is an attempt to deal with 21stcentury problems using policies that failed in the 20th.
在上次选举中，在两年前和一个政治时代之前，我们对走极端感到遗憾。如今的宣言却更极端。2017年，工党是欧洲主流的左翼。如今，工党将没收大公司10%的股权，这些股权将以资金的形式持有，这些资金主要支付给财政部，而不是支付给本应成为受益者的工人。它将分阶段实行每周四天工作制，按理说不会减薪。被国有化的行业似乎只会越来越多。药品专利可能会被强制许可。快速增加支出的账单将落在富人和企业身上，他们的税收负担将从七国集团中最低的国家变为最高的国家。工党试图用20世纪失败的政策来解决21世纪的问题。

Nor has Mr Corbyn done anything to dampen concerns about his broader worldview. A critic of Western foreign policy and sympathiser with dictators in Iran and Venezuela who oppose it, he blamed nato for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Last year he suggested samples of a nerve agent used to poison a Russian former spy in Salisbury should be sent to Moscow, so Vladimir Putin could see if it was his. Under such a prime minister, Britain could not rely on receiving American intelligence. Nor has Mr Corbyn dealt with the anti-Semitism that has taken root in Labour on his watch. Some Remainers might swallow this as the price of a second Brexit referendum, which Mr Corbyn has at last promised. We have long argued for such a vote. Yet Mr Corbyn’s ruinous plans at home and bankrupt views abroad mean that this newspaper cannot support Labour.
科尔宾也没有做任何事情来缓和人们对他更广阔的世界观的担忧。他批评西方的外交政策，同情伊朗和委内瑞拉的独裁者，因为他们反对西方的政策。去年，他建议将用于毒死索尔兹伯里一名前俄罗斯间谍的神经毒剂样本送到莫斯科，这样弗拉基米尔•普京就能知道这是不是他的。在这样一位首相的领导下，英国不能指望得到美国的情报。科尔宾先生也没有处理在任内扎根于工党的反犹太主义。一些留欧派可能会认为这是第二次英国退欧公投的代价，科尔宾最终承诺了这一点。我们一直主张进行这样的投票。然而科尔宾先生在国内的毁灭性计划和在国外破产的观点意味着本刊不能支持工党。