Something old, something new

新老并存

The monarchy is stronger than it has been for years—and the government weaker

王室逐年渐强，政府日渐衰败

译者：Sebastian

A ROYAL wedding is as good a time as any to conduct an audit of the British constitution. Walter Bagehot, the editor of The Economist in 1860-77, argued that the constitution was divided into two branches. The monarchy represents the“dignified” branch. Its job is to symbolise the state through pomp and ceremony. The government—Parliament, the cabinet and the civil service—represents the “efficient” branch. Its job is to run the country by passing laws and providing public services. The dignified branch governs through poetry, and the efficient branch through prose. Today, the dignified branch is adapting to an age of populism much better than the efficient branch.

英国皇室婚礼的时机绝佳，正如核查英国宪政一样，什么时候都不赖。瓦尔特·白芝浩是《经济学人》1860-1877年间的编辑，他曾断言，英国宪政已分裂为两个分支。皇室代表了“高贵”的一支，其通过华丽的排场和庆典代表国家。由议会、内阁以及行政机构组成的政府则代表了“高效”的另一支，政府通过批准法律和提供公共服务治理国家。高贵的王室分支通过诗歌实行统治，而有效的政府分支则通过散文治理国家。现如今，民粹主义当道，王室显然比政府更能适应新局面。

Twenty-odd years ago it looked as if the monarchy was in an advanced state of decomposition. The ill-starred marriage of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer undermined the monarchy’s claim to unify the country through dignity. The couple’s squabbles divided supporters of Diana from a much smaller group of supporters of Charles, and provided the tabloid press with a rich (and sickening) diet of gossip. The queen capped it all with her handling of Diana’s death. She said nothing for five days, burning decades of goodwill with her silence.

二十多年前，王室行将就木，分崩离析。王室以尊崇身份治国，然而查尔斯王子同戴安娜王妃的不幸婚姻，却让王室为此蒙羞。夫妻间的争吵让双方簇拥分道扬镳，王妃粉丝众多，查尔斯王子则孤立无援。坊间小报更是从中拾获不少（病态）八卦新闻。王妃去世，女王应对不利，王妃去世后五天，女王默不作声，其数十年积累的声誉扫荡殆尽。

The Charles and Di debacle was one of several. Prince Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, were derided as“Airmiles Andy”and “Freebie Fergie”. The queen and Prince Philip looked out of place in “Cool Britannia”. Prince Charles’s determination to marry Camilla Parker Bowles, with whom he had conducted an affair while married to Diana, further alienated the public.

查尔斯同戴安娜的婚姻破裂只是众多王室不幸之一。安德鲁王子同其前妻萨拉·弗格森也被嘲弄为“头等舱男爵”和“搭便车弗弗”。女王同菲利普亲王在“酷英国”的大潮中找不到位置，无所适从。查尔斯王子婚内同卡米拉·帕克·鲍尔斯有染，之后查尔斯决定成婚，更让王室进一步疏离民众。

At the same time, the efficient branch went from strength to strength. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown modernised the Labour Party and went on to modernise the state, giving the Bank of England its freedom, devolving power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and spring-cleaning government departments. The efficient branch even had to step in to save the dignified branch from itself. Mr Blair pronounced Diana“the people’s princess” as the queen remained in her Scottish castle, and persuaded the palace to set up a committee to look at the Crown’s future.

与此同时，政府则羽翼丰满，更上一层楼。托尼·布莱尔和戈登·布朗使工党，接着是国家实现现代化，并赋予英格兰银行自由，让权苏格兰、威尔士和北爱尔兰，彻底清理政府部门。政府分支甚至介入王室，拯救其于危难。女王深居苏格兰城堡时，布莱尔宣称戴安娜为“人民的王妃”，并说服王室成立委员会以来照看王室未来。

Today the situation has been reversed. The efficient branch is in its worst state since the 1970s. The two main parties have been captured by their extremes. The prime minister lacks authority. Westminster has been rocked by scandals about sexual harassment and bullying. The Home Office is in turmoil. The government is preparing for Brexit, its most complicated task since the second world war, without a majority in the Commons or a consensus in its own ranks.

三十年河东三十年河西，如今境况逆转。政府处于19世纪70年代后最糟糕的时期。两党都由极端分子占领，首相缺乏权威；议会因性骚扰丑闻和欺凌一蹶不振；内政部亦杂乱无章。政府正在为脱欧做准备，这可是二战以来政府最艰巨的任务，而此时政府缺乏下议院支持，在上议院也无法达成共识。

Brexit has confronted the efficient branch with an existential crisis. By calling the referendum, David Cameron not only betrayed the efficient branch’s guiding principle (that you keep the most difficult decisions for yourself) but also opened the door to a populist revolt. The efficient branch now has an agonising choice: implement a policy that it believes to be foolish, or frustrate the “will of the people”. Hence the paralysis—and the preoccupation with damage-limiting fudges.

因脱欧问题，政府面临了切实的危及。大卫·卡梅伦发起了脱欧公投，此举不仅背叛了政府的指导原则（把最艰难的抉择留给自己），也同样为民粹主义叛乱打开了一扇大门。政府如今面临了一个痛苦的选择：要么执行在自己看来愚蠢无比的政策，要么挫伤“人民的意愿”。因此如今政府瘫痪，并编造脱欧影响不大的谎言自我安慰。

The dignified branch, by contrast, is thriving. The queen represents stability in an unstable world, as well as unity in a polarised one. She has spent 66 of her 92 years on the throne and has survived 12 prime ministers and innumerable political crises. The royal household has done a good job of moving Prince Andrew and his ilk into the background and replacing them with a new generation. Prince William and Kate Middleton look exactly like the dignified mannequins that Bagehot’s constitution demands.

政府没落，王室兴起。在动荡和多极分化的世界中，女王代表了稳定，毕竟，她已92岁高龄，在位66年，期间历经12任首相，以及不计其数的政治危局。安德鲁王子及其亲属退居幕后，新一代王室成员崭露头角，王室此举不可谓不成功。威廉王子和凯特王妃作为王室成员，也更是白芝浩宪政设想中的尊崇典范。

The marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is likely to be another brilliant chapter in this story of renewal. There are blemishes; Ms Markle’s family look almost as strange as the Windsors. But the happy couple nevertheless offer the dignified branch a chance to reinvent itself for a more multicultural and touchy-feely age. Ms Markle is a mixed-race American divorcee. As an actress, she has had the ideal training for her odd new career. Harry combines an easy charm with a sense of vulnerability, talking openly about undergoing therapy to recover from the horrors of his upbringing, particularly his mother’s death.

哈里王子同梅根·马科尔的婚姻更像是全新故事的另一个绝妙章节。瑕瑜互见，这桩皇室婚姻也有两个瑕疵：女方家庭同男方家庭几乎同等离奇诡异。尽管如此，在如今文化多元以及情绪化盛行的时代，这对新婚鸳鸯给皇室提供了一个重塑公众形象的机会。马科尔女士是美国人，混血，更离过婚。演员出身的她，面对新的特殊王妃生涯，她显然有备而来。哈里王子童年不幸，母亲去世对他打击尤甚，他身上有一种悠闲迷人，又有点脆弱的气质，对于悲惨童年的心理治疗他也是直言不讳。

God save the queen

天佑女王

The dignified branch nevertheless has a problem waiting in the wings, in the form of the future Charles III. A new book by Tom Bower,“Rebel Prince”, paints an unflattering picture of the world’s oldest intern. Charles is both entitled and whiny. He lives in six houses but complains about this lot. He is astonishingly selfish, fretting about global warming while travelling by private jet.  

然而，王室又有新的问题，此问题在于未来的查尔斯三世。汤姆·鲍尔的新书“Rebel Prince”（反叛王子）中，描绘了一幅世界上最年老的实习生的照片。查尔斯王子大权即握，却不满现状；身居豪宅，却抱怨命运。他自私自利，时刻担忧全球变暖，却乘坐私人飞机飞来飞去。

The really worrying thing about Charles is not that he is a weak man but that he is a surprisingly strong one. He has a wacky but well-worked-out philosophy: New Ageism meets neo-feudalism. He has a record of getting what he wants. He forced a reluctant establishment to accept the“horsey home-wrecker”, Camilla,  as his wife. He takes on what he regards as vested interests, berating architects for building carbuncles, opposing genetically  modified crops and savaging modern educational theories. He  has advanced his causes by writing to politicians and lobbying behind the scenes. This would be manageable if his beliefs were  all barmy. The problem is that some of them, like his environmentalism,  have proved both popular and prescient.

查尔斯王子要是懦弱不堪，倒也没什么可担忧的，可他却精强力壮，这就不禁让人忧心忡忡。他拥有与众不同却经得住检验的哲学理念：新纪元主义同新封建主义的结合。查尔斯王子履历显赫，只要想做，定能成功。他强迫王室接受他同“马一样的家庭毁坏者”卡米拉成婚。对于既得利益，他受之无愧。对丑陋的现代建筑，他大加指责；他反对转基因农作物，并强烈批判现代教育理论。查尔斯王子同政客关系密切，并在幕后多方游说以达成其抱负。要是他的观念都是疯疯癫癫的，倒也还好说；可问题是，他的诸多理念，比如他的环境保护论，却又广受欢迎且富有远见。

Being both determined and right is a wonderful thing in a politician but a dangerous one in a constitutional monarch—particularly when determination shades into pigheadedness and rightness comes with a hefty dose of foolishness. Charles would be well advised to spend the rest of his internship digesting Walter Bagehot’s great book,“The English Constitution”, which lays out, in pellucid prose, not only what a modern monarch should do but also what he shouldn’t. Otherwise, he may find himself doing to the dignified branch what the referendum has already done to the efficient.

若政客意志坚定且理念无误，那可是难得的好事儿，可对于宪政君主而言，两者兼具则极度危险——尤其当意志坚定变为固执己见，理念正确却愚不可及。沃尔特·白芝浩大作“The English Constitution”垂范百世，对于君主可为不可为都有明白易晓的论断，查尔斯王子即位前，应详加研究。不然，则查尔斯于王室，将同脱欧公投之于政府，可能导致王室再次日渐式微。