2024年11月2日，在赢得保守党领袖竞选后，罗伯特·詹里克向凯米·巴登诺奇表示祝贺。
Kemi Badenoch is congratulated by Robert Jenrick after winning the Conservative party leadership contest, 2 November 2024.
别被他们领导人的争吵所迷惑。他们精心安排的假冲突很可能以联盟的“啪”声告终。在一场备受欢迎的大会演讲中，凯米·巴登诺奇将火力转向改革英国党，将其描述为“奇怪”，并排除选举联盟的可能性。啪！不甘示弱，她的前同事罗伯特·詹里克嘲讽巴登诺奇是富人的代言人，这对一个看起来像是不小心通过括约肌吞下一沓50英镑纸币的人来说，真是太讽刺了。
Don’t be fooled by its bickering leaders. Their calibrated fake fighting will probably end in coalition apow! In a warmly received conference speech, Kemi Badenoch turns her fire on Reform UK, describing it as “weird”, and ruling out an electoral pact. Slap! Not to be outdone, her former colleague Robert Jenrick derides Badenoch as a champion of the wealthy, which is quite rich for a guy who looks like he’s just accidentally ingested a bundle of £50 notes through his sphincter.
轰！改革党的理查德·蒂斯和复兴党的鲁珀特·洛在网上就德比郡一场地方议会补选的结果展开冲突，在这次选举中，绿党因右翼选票分裂而获利。“投复兴党，就是投伊斯兰主义者，”蒂斯斥责道。“投改革党，就是投某个随机的孟加拉国人，”洛回应道。
Bosh! Reform’s Richard Tice and Restore’s Rupert Lowe clash online over the result of a council byelection in Derbyshire, in which the Greens profited from a split rightwing vote. “Vote Restore get Islamists,” Tice chides. “Vote Reform, get some random Bangladeshi bloke,” Lowe responds.
与此同时，保守党卷土重来。凯米反弹是真实的。凯米复兴是真实的。我们都患上了严重的凯米痔疮。你可能会好奇，为什么在她的党失去563名议员和40%的议会席位、仍比2024年明显低点低约四个百分点、而她本人似乎无法在广播采访中不露出像餐厅食客一样——恰好得到所点之物却莫名其妙地愤怒的表情的情况下，媒体却在谈论巴登诺奇的复兴。关键在于，保守党再次成为一个严肃的执政党，原因在于我们都这么说了。
Meanwhile, the Conservatives are back. The Kemibounce is real. The Keminaissance is true. We’ve all got a severe case of the Kemirrhoids. And you may wonder why much of the media are talking about a Badenoch revival in a year where her party lost 563 councillors and 40% of its councils, remains about four points below its apparent nadir of 2024, and in which the leader herself appears incapable of doing a broadcast interview without looking like a restaurant diner who received exactly what she ordered and is inexplicably furious at it. The point is that the Conservatives are a serious party of government again, and the reason is that we all said so.
即使把巴德诺赫表现得异常坚挺的个人民调数据考虑在内，这依然让人感觉是一次很大程度上随意的立场大转变。《金融时报》上刊登了一篇柔焦风格的专访，《太阳报》发表了一篇温暖的社论，右翼媒体的其他部分也对保守党大会进行了总体上积极的报道。新任影子外交大臣、曾被视为党内温和派的汤姆·图根达特在《观察家报》上拥有了一个赢得同情的发声平台，用来为该党反对净零排放政策以及《欧洲人权公约》进行辩护。
And even if we take into account Badenoch’s curiously resilient personal polling this does feel like a largely arbitrary volte-face. There was a soft-focus interview in the Financial Times, a warm editorial in the Sun, and generally positive coverage of the Tory conference in the rest of the rightwing press. Tom Tugendhat, the new shadow foreign secretary and once regarded as a party moderate, had a sympathetic platform in the Observer to defend the party’s opposition to net zero and the European convention on human rights.
从一个安全的距离来看，我们有可能以一种相当乐观的眼光看待这些政治立场的重新调整。右翼正在把自己撕得粉碎，这有可能让一个左翼替代方案——或者退一步说，工党——坐收渔利。在洛伊与奈杰尔·法拉奇持续不断的争斗中，或者在《每日电讯报》针对“恢复英国”组织的一系列言辞激进的社论中，人们很容易隐约看到一种基本、共识性价值观的重新确立：尽管我们存在诸多分歧，但某些声音注定永远是不能被接受的。
From a safe distance, it is possible to regard these realignments in a fairly optimistic light. The right is tearing itself to shreds, potentially allowing a leftwing alternative – or failing that, Labour – to clean up. And in the continuing scrap between Lowe and Nigel Farage, or the series of aggressive Telegraph editorials aimed at Restore Britain it is tempting to glimpse a reassertion of basic, consensual values in which, for all our many disagreements, certain voices will always be beyond the pale.
偶尔你甚至会听到进步左翼人士这样说：一个强大中右翼是抵御极端极右翼的一个必要且受欢迎的堡垒。尽管我们可以与巴德诺赫所在的党派产生强烈且激烈的意见分歧，但我们也可以承认，温和右翼在某种程度上可以充当一道卫生隔离带，防范本土主义者、族群民族主义者和种族理论家，否则这些人可能会掌控政府的权力杠杆。如果这真的是正在发生的事情，那么所有这一切可能都是真的。但事实真的是这样吗？
Occasionally you will even hear it said on the progressive left that a strong centre-right is a necessary, welcome bulwark against the extremist far right. That while we can disagree strongly and vehemently with Badenoch’s party, we can also recognise the ways in which a moderate right can act as a kind of cordon sanitaire against the nativists, ethnonationalists and race theorists who may otherwise get their hands on the levers of government. All of which would probably be true, if that were actually what was happening. But is it?
让我们从保守党开始，该党似乎正在迅速转向一个被内部人士描述为“维特罗斯女性”（Waitrose Woman）的人口群体：富有、社会观念开明、对文化战争言论不感兴趣，但高度关注税收和经济。“在过去的18个月里，我们做了大量的民意调查，”一位保守党消息人士对《星期日邮报》表示。“你确实必须要显得通情达理。”
Let’s start with the Tories, who appear to be rapidly pivoting towards a demographic that one insider has described as “Waitrose Woman”: affluent, socially liberal, turned off by culture-war rhetoric but laser-focused on tax and the economy. “We have done a ton of opinion research over the last 18 months,” a Conservative source told the Mail on Sunday. “You do have to appear reasonable.”
或者，正如一位影子内阁大臣对《卫报》所说：“我们将我们的有毒色彩外包给了改革党。”但在现实世界中，除了表面的品牌塑造之外，这两个政纲有多大不同？影子内阁成员尼克·蒂莫西（Nick Timothy）称特拉法加广场上的伊斯兰祈祷是不符合英国传统的“主导行为”、“直接出自伊斯兰主义者的剧本”，巴德诺赫（Badenoch）对此表示支持。
Or, as one shadow cabinet minister told the Guardian“We have outsourced our toxicity to Reform.”But in the real world, beyond superficial branding, how different are the two platforms? Shadow cabinet member Nick Timothy called Islamic prayers in Trafalgar Square un-British“an act of domination”, “straight from the Islamist playbook”, and Badenoch backed him Badenoch advocates a ban on pro-Palestine marches, but argued Tommy Robinson should not receive the same treatment.
巴德诺赫主张禁止亲巴勒斯坦游行，但认为汤米·罗宾逊（Tommy Robinson）不应受到同样的对待。另一位影子内阁大臣凯蒂·拉姆（Katie Lam）主张大规模驱逐合法定居的移民，以使英国成为一个“文化上连贯的人群”。保守党警察与犯罪专员唐娜·琼斯（Donna Jones）对朴次茅斯蒙面维警抗议活动的回应是将责任归咎于政府未能控制我们的边境。
一名曾为新纳粹分子的活动人士被保守党选为地方选举候选人，随后被任命为顾问。巴德诺赫在《每日电讯报》上撰文称，任何致力于净零排放目标的人都不再受欢迎。
Another shadow cabinet member, Katie Lam, advocated mass deportations of legally settled immigrants in order to make Britain a “culturally coherent group of people The Conservative police and crime commissioner Donna Jones responded to the masked vigilante protests in Portsmouth by blaming the government for failing to control our borders. A former neo-Nazi activist was selected as a local election candidate for the Tories, and subsequently appointed as an adviser In the Telegraph, Badenoch wrote that anyone committed to net zero targets is no longer welcome in the party.
至于改革党，周一宣布将立即暂停英国庇护系统的消息使该党与“恢复英国”（Restore）更加一致，这两个政党都主张进行美国移民及海关执法局（ICE）风格的突袭搜查、剥夺那些以为自己会永久居留这里的人的公民身份，并停止向拒绝接收回国移民的国家提供援助和签证。曾为保守党人的苏拉·布雷弗曼（Suella Braverman）现在表示，她“能理解为什么有些人会被‘恢复英国’吸引”，并暗示有色人种不能成为英国人。
As for Reform, Monday’s announcement that it would immediately suspend the UK asylum system brought the party further in line with Restore, both of whom advocate ICE-style raids, the stripping of citizenship from people who thought they were here permanently, and the cessation of aid and visas to countries who refuse to take back migrants. Suella Braverman, a former Tory, now says she can “understand why some people are drawn to Restore”, and suggests people of colour cannot be English.
确实，你可以争辩说，净零、福利、减税、以色列、脱欧、国防开支、跨性别权利、唐纳德·特朗普、对整容帮派和伊斯兰教的痴迷、移民以及最重要的是，他们共同的敌人，几乎没有一张海苔能把这三个政党区分开来。然而与此同时，我们被期望相信这些政党正在进行一场永恒的血仇，而不是同一支军队的三个头目，为了共同的目标而采取不同的策略。
Indeed, you can argue that net zero, welfare, tax cuts, Israel, Brexit, defence spending, trans rights, Donald Trump, the obsession with grooming gangs and Islam, immigration and, most importantly, their common enemies, there is barely a sheet of nori to separate the three parties. And yet at the same time we are expected to believe that these parties engaged in an eternal blood feud, rather than three heads of the same army, pursuing different strategies towards a common cause.
当然，威斯敏斯特会全盘接受这一叙事，因为它专注于联盟上的分歧和人物胜过思想。保守党将被允许继续净化其品牌，而不净化其平台。法拉奇将继续作为该运动的旗手，筹集捐款和获得媒体曝光。与此同时，恢复（Restore）同样扮演着重要角色，作为变革的引擎、压力集团和智囊团：将修辞窗口向右推移，同时让巴登诺赫和法拉奇相比显得更为理性。
Naturally Westminster will fall for this narrative wholesale, focused as it is on divisions over alliances, personalities over ideas. The Conservatives will be allowed to carry on decontaminating their brand without decontaminating their platform. Farage will continue as flag bearer for the movement, sweeping up donor money and airtime. Meanwhile Restore serve an equally important role as the engine of change, the pressure group, the brains trust: shifting the rhetorical window to the right while allowing Badenoch and Farage to look reasonable in comparison.
右翼的内战事实上是一场闹剧，一场为我们上演的假装斗争。右翼阵营如今已成为一种单一的基本物质，能够对其需要吸引的不同受众作出反应并经过精心校准。改革党（Reform）已经在与恢复党（Restore）进行非正式谈判，现在可以根据后工业北部、米德兰兹和威尔士的需求定制其政策，让经过整顿的保守党——该项目的可接受面孔——专注于其南部和农村腹地。而且，如果在所有争吵和内斗之后，真的需要组建联盟？我们真的会期望一个完全建立在权力获取与行使之上的保守党突然拒绝它吗？
The civil war on the right is in fact a charade, a fake fight being enacted for our benefit. The right bloc is now a single basic substance, responsive and carefully calibrated to the different audiences it needs to capture. Reform, already in informal talks with Restore, can now tailor its offering to the post-industrial north, Midlands and Wales, leaving the rehabilitated Conservatives – the acceptable face of the project – to concentrate on their southern and rural heartlands. And if, after all the bickering and infighting, a coalition should be required? Do we really expect a Conservative party founded entirely on the gain and exercise of power to suddenly turn it down?
对于左翼人士来说，右翼内部发生崩溃的想法多少会给人一种宽慰感。但实际上，这里没有任何东西遭到唾弃。这些人物可能会为了我们的娱乐而针锋相对，但他们的思想和政治理念在很大程度上是相通的。各个角色正在被瓜分，但最终这出戏码依然如故。
To those on the left, the idea of a rightwing meltdown feels vaguely reassuring. But in reality nothing here is being repudiated. The personalities may butt heads for our entertainment, but the ideas and politics are largely common among them all. The parts are being divvied out, but ultimately the production remains the same.
乔纳森·利乌（Jonathan Liew）是《卫报》专栏作家
Jonathan Liew is a Guardian columnist