保守党虽远未沦为英国政坛的边缘势力，但至今仍未能重拾其自认为理应拥有的影响力。保守党人因身为议会中的官方反对党而沾沾自喜。然而在更广泛的民众层面，英国改革党却主导了右翼议题走向：该党在民意调查中已超越凯米·巴本诺克领导的保守党，还从后者阵营中挖走了多名议员。
The Conservative party is far from the margin of British politics, but it has yet to recover the relevance to which it feels historically entitled. The Tories are flattered by their status as the official opposition in parliament. In the wider country, Reform UK has set the agenda on the right, overtaking Kemi Badenoch’s party in opinion polls and poaching MPs from her benches.
不过，奈杰尔·法拉奇所领导的改革党发展势头已有所放缓。外界对改革党财务状况的严格审查令其领袖形象蒙上阴影。此外，极端民族主义政党“复兴英国”的崛起也让法拉奇无法再理所当然地指望获得极右翼选民的支持。一味迎合核心支持者群体，使得改革党难以采取必要的温和化举措以争取更多保守党和工党的选票。
But Nigel Farage’s progress has stalled. Scrutiny of Reform’s finances has made its leader look shifty. Competition from Restore Britain, an extreme nationalist party, has denied Mr Farage the luxury of taking far-right votes for granted. Pandering to a hardcore audience makes it difficult for Reform to affect the moderation required to capture more Tory and Labour votes.
这一局面恰恰为保守党提供了重新确立自身作为工党主流反对党地位的良机。许多保守党人认为，自从安迪·伯纳姆接替基尔·斯塔默出任首相后，可供保守党发挥的空间明显增大了。
This creates an opportunity for Conservatives to reassert themselves as the mainstream opposition to Labour. Many Tories believe the available space has grown since Andy Burnham replaced Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister.
伯纳姆的施政纲领比前任更为大胆，且善于宣传推广——这些特质促使其支持率有所回升。该纲领体现了毫不掩饰的左翼自由主义理想：推行全民免费社会护理服务；允许公共部门接管公用事业；消除与欧盟关系中的种种限制；实施选举制度改革。在新领导层的带领下，工党摆脱了此前竞选时的防御姿态——过去工党总是小心翼翼，生怕冒犯保守党人的敏感神经。
Mr Burnham has a bolder agenda than his predecessor, and he communicates it well – qualities that have been rewarded with a poll-ratings recovery. It is also a programme with unapologetic left-liberal ambition – universal social care, free at the point of use; opening the door to public ownership of utilities; dissolving red lines in relations with the EU; electoral reform. Under new leadership, the party has risen out of the defensive crouch from which it fought the election, fearful of offending Conservative sensibilities.
如今保守党人果然被触怒了：伯纳姆上周在党代会上描绘的蓝图完全背离了玛格丽特·撒切尔的执政理念，而在保守党教义中，这堪称最大的异端之举。
Conservatives are duly offended. The vision that Mr Burnham outlined at his party conference last week was a repudiation of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy, and there is no greater heresy in Tory doctrine.
接下来几天，巴德诺克女士在伯明翰举行的保守党大会上发表反驳言论时应该不会有什么困难。她是保守党“铁娘子崇拜文化”的忠实拥趸，坚信低税收与小政府才是政治美德的核心要义。她认为有不少选民与她持有相同理念，这些人会对工党产生反感，也对法拉奇心存戒备。这些人正是她想要争取的选民群体。
Mrs Badenoch will not struggle to articulate a rebuttal at her party’s conference in Birmingham over the next few days. She is a devotee of the Conservative cult of the Iron Lady, committed to low taxes and a smaller state as axioms of political virtue. She believes there are voters who share that conviction, who will be repelled by Labour, and who are deeply wary of Mr Farage. This is the electoral audience she is targeting.
这一策略本身并无不合理之处，但也算不上成熟完善。巴德诺克女士更喜欢与自己心目中的理想对手展开辩论，而非现实中真正的对手。她指责伯纳姆试图把英国带回20世纪70年代，却并未认真回应伯纳姆对80年代英国社会问题的分析，也忽视了自己的怀旧式意识形态或许需要结合此后几十年的发展情况加以修正。
It isn’t an irrational strategy, but nor is it a well-developed one. Mrs Badenoch likes to debate the opponent she wants rather than the one she has. She accuses Mr Burnham of taking Britain back to the 1970s, without engaging with his analysis of what went wrong in the 1980s or considering that her own nostalgic ideology might need revision with reference to subsequent decades.
她对“改革英国党”的态度则更加偏颇。保守党希望选民对法拉奇竞选首相一事持负面看法，但他们的批评却带有选择性。巴德诺克女士虽就“改革英国党”的捐款不透明问题发声，却对该党有关移民问题的极端言论鲜有批评——这主要是因为保守党的移民政策与法拉奇的主张如出一辙。尽管从“改革英国党”倒向保守党的选民数量有所减少，但两党之间的界限依然模糊不清。
Her approach to Reform is even more blinkered. The Tories want voters to take a dim view of Mr Farage’s candidacy to be prime minister, but they are selective in their criticism. Mrs Badenoch joins the fray over opaque donations, but has less to say about Reform’s toxic rhetoric around immigration, largely because Conservative policy fits the Faragist mould. The traffic in defections has slowed, but the boundary between the two parties is porous.
要想让保守党在英国政坛具备竞争力，巴德诺克女士需要提出更具说服力的论点。她需要拿出能回应伯纳姆质疑的论据，而非仅仅依赖20世纪那些陈词滥调。此外，她还需明确拒绝法拉奇所倡导的民族民粹主义，用能让选民在原则层面区分两党差异的措辞来表达立场——目前来看，两党在原则问题上其实并无明显区别。
To make her party competitive in British politics, Mrs Badenoch needs more serious arguments. She needs an answer to Mr Burnham that doesn’t retreat into lazy 20th-century political cliche. And she needs to reject Mr Farage’s brand of national populism in terms that give voters reasons to distinguish between their two parties on points of principle, when at the moment there are none.