Theresa May is intolerable—but unsackable

AFTER she contrived to lose the Tories’ parliamentary majority last year in spite of a widely unfancied Labour opposition, Theresa May was described by one former cabinet colleague as “a dead woman walking”. That harsh description has turned out to be only half-right. The prime minister’s inactivity since the election means that it would be more accurate to describe her as a dead woman standing still.

去年，尽管人们普遍不看好工党，但在特蕾莎梅促使保守党失去议会多数席位后，她被一位前内阁同僚形容为“行尸走肉般的女人”。这种苛刻的描述证明一半是正确的。自大选以来首相的不作为，更准确地说她是一个坐以待毙的死去的女人。

The lack of policies or purpose in Downing Street, coupled with Mrs May’s frequent political pratfalls, have driven the Conservative Party to the brink of seeking a new leader. The case for getting rid of the prime minister is compelling. But consider more closely what would follow and there is a stronger, though depressing, argument that if Britain tried to replace its failing leader it would be even worse off.

唐宁街的政策或目的缺乏，加之特蕾莎梅频繁的在政治上出丑，使得保守党已经到了寻求新领导人的边缘。摆脱首相的理由是令人信服的。但更仔细地考虑一下接下来会发生什么，还有一种更强烈的、虽然令人沮丧的观点，即如果英国试图换掉其失败的领导人，情况会更糟。

Sub-prime

Since her electoral disaster Mrs May has blown several last chances. She mishandled the aftermath of a tragic fire at Grenfell Tower. She spluttered her way through a speech designed to relaunch her premiership, as the set literally fell apart behind her. When she attempted a cabinet reshuffle some of her ministers refused to budge. Worse than these blunders is the vacuum of ideas. The politician whom we nicknamed “Theresa Maybe” a year ago still cannot decide what to do about Britain’s housing shortage, the crisis in care for the elderly or the slow decline of the National Health Service.

自从她的灾难般的当选以来，梅失去了几次最后的机会。她错误地处理了格林菲尔塔大火的善后工作。在她的演讲中，她迫不及待地说要重新开始她的首相生涯，因为她的这一套已经在她身后土崩瓦解了。当她试图进行内阁改组时，她的一些部长拒绝让步。比这些错误更糟糕的是思想的真空。一年前，我们戏称为“特丽莎也许”的政治家仍无法决定该如何应对英国的住房短缺、老年护理危机以及国家医疗服务体系的缓慢衰退。

Most deafening is her silence on Brexit. This was once passed off as a clever tactic to keep Britain’s negotiating strategy under wraps. But with less than a year left to reach a deal, it is clear that the real purpose of her secrecy is to disguise the fact that there is no strategy. Mrs May’s “red lines”, which include leaving the European Union’s customs union and maintaining an invisible Irish border, are mutually inconsistent. On trade, she wants a solution that somehow combines continuity for business with reclaiming control over regulations—and she seems to expect the EU to draw up the blueprint.

最让人受不了的是她对退欧的沉默。这曾经是一种巧妙的策略，以使英国的谈判策略保密。但在离达成协议还有不到一年的时间里，很明显，她保密的真正目的是掩盖没有策略的事实。梅的“红线”，包括离开欧盟的关税同盟和维持一个看不见的爱尔兰边境，都是相互矛盾的。在贸易方面，她想要一个解决方案，以某种方式将业务的连续性和对监管的重新控制结合起来——她似乎希望欧盟能制定出蓝图。

But ousting Mrs May might make Brexit little better, and perhaps much worse. Brexit’s internal contradictions could not be squared by any prime minister, though another might be more frank about them. As the government’s own analysis showed this week, the more Britain sets out to reclaim sovereignty the more it will dent prosperity. Leave did not win its majority on the basis that Britons would be poorer. Nor would any prime minister be able to force a have-cake-and-eat-it deal on the EU, whose economy is six times the size of Britain’s.

但是，驱逐梅可能会让退欧变得更好，也可能会更糟。英国退欧的内部矛盾不能被任何首相达成一致，尽管另一个可能更坦率一些。正如英国政府本周的分析所显示的那样，英国越想收回主权，就越会削弱繁荣。离开并没有赢得大多数人的支持，因为英国人会更穷。也不会有任何首相能在欧盟的经济规模达到英国的六倍的情况下，迫使其达成一项两全其美的协议。

The Tories are still right to suspect that another leader might make a better job of Brexit than Mrs May. But they would probably pick someone even less suitable. Under party rules, its MPs would shortlist two candidates: probably one proponent of “soft” Brexit (remaining in the customs union and perhaps the single market) and one of the “hard” variety (leaving both arrangements and even walking out of the talks). The party’s members, who back hard Brexit by three to one, would then decide—so the chances are the winner would be a hardliner such as Boris Johnson, the chaotic foreign secretary, or Jacob Rees-Mogg, a neo-Victorian backbench novelty.

保守党仍然认为，另一位领导人可能会比梅在英国退欧中做得更好。但他们可能会选择一个更不合适的人。根据党的规则，它的国会议员将会入围两名候选人:可能是“软”退欧(留在关税同盟，也许是单一市场)和“硬”方式(离开这关税同盟和单一市场，又退出谈判)。保守党的成员们将会以三比一的结果支持英国硬退欧，然后他们就会决定，所以获胜的可能是强硬派，比如混乱的外交大臣鲍里斯约翰逊，或者是新维多利亚时代后座议员新秀雅各布里斯-莫格。

Under Mrs May, Britain is on course to leave the EU in 2019 without anything much in place bar a transition agreement to buy a couple more years of talks. The Tories will surely oust her at that point if they do not do so now. But it is conceivable that by then they would be readier to pick a sensible successor. The reality of a hard Brexit’s consequences—for the economy, the Irish border, the regulation of medicines and much else—is slowly dawning. Labour is creeping towards a softer position, giving the Tories space to do the same. A new generation of would-be Conservative leaders might be less willing than their elders to enact a policy that would harm the economy, and with it their party’s electoral prospects. Mrs May’s is a failed premiership that must end. But only when she can be replaced by someone who would not fare even worse.

在梅的领导下，英国将于2019年离开欧盟，而在此期间，英国将不会签署一份过渡协议，以购买多几年的谈判。如果保守党现在不这么做，在那时也肯定会把她赶下台。但可以想象，到那时，他们将更愿意选择一个明智的继任者。对于英国经济、爱尔兰边境、药品监管以及其他方面，硬退欧结果的现实状况正在慢慢浮出水面。工党正逐渐走向一个更温和的立场，这让保守党有了同样的空间做同样的事情。新一代的保守党领袖可能比他们的前辈们更不愿意制定一项会损害经济的政策，而且会损害他们的政党的选举前景。梅是一个失败的首相，必须结束，但只有当她能被一个不会变得更糟的人取代的时候。

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Intolerable but unsackable"