Voters went to the polls in Britain on Thursday in a dyspeptic mood, many of them frustrated with the Conservative government and skeptical that any replacement can unravel the tangle of problems hobbling the country.
周四，英国选民怀着悲观的情绪前往投票站，许多人对保守党政府感到失望，并怀疑任何替代者都无法解决困扰国家的一系列问题。

Their skepticism is warranted, according to analysts. Even if the Labour Party wins a robust majority in Parliament, as polls suggest, it will confront a raft of challenges, from a torpid economy to a corroded National Health Service, without having many tools to fix them.
分析人士认为，他们的这种疑虑不无道理。即便工党如民意调查显示的那样赢得议会的绝对多数席位，它也将面临着从经济低迷到国民健康服务体系退化的一系列挑战，而且没有太多手段来解决这些问题。

The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, would inherit a “legacy of ashes,” said Robert Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester. And voters, who less than five years ago elected the Conservatives in a landslide, are not likely to give Mr. Starmer much slack to turn things around.
曼彻斯特大学政治学教授罗伯特·福特表示，工党领袖基尔·斯塔默将继承是一堆“灰烬”。不到五年前，选民以压倒性优势选举出了保守党，他们不太可能给斯塔默太多机会来扭转局面。

“The message could not be clearer: You must deliver change — or you are toast,” Mr. Ford said. “People will not be patient.”
“信息再清楚不过了：你必须能带来改变——否则你就完蛋了，”福特说。“人们不会有耐心的。”

The election is shaping up as a political watershed for the country. It is likely to represent the repudiation of the Conservative Party after 14 years in power, and the elevation of the Labour Party, which less than five years ago suffered its own electoral defeat, the worst since 1935, at the hands of the Conservatives.
这次选举将成为英国政治的分水岭。它很可能代表着保守党在执政14年后的衰落及工党的崛起。就在不到五年前，工党在保守党手中遭遇了自1935年以来最惨痛的选举失利。

That dizzying reversal of political fortunes speaks to the turmoil that has engulfed Britain since it voted to leave the European Union in 2016. Brexit fractured the Conservative Party, leaving it increasingly erratic and extreme, as it confronted the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis.
这种令人眼花缭乱的政治命运的逆转表明，自2016年投票退出欧盟以来，英国一直处于动荡之中。英国脱欧使保守党分裂，使其在面对新冠大流行和生活成本危机的挑战时变得越来越不稳定和极端。

With Labour on the threshold of power, it faces hard trade-offs that reflect the fallout from those years: a country depleted, exhausted and desperate for change.
即将执政之际，工党面临着艰难的权衡，反映了那些年带来的影响和后果：一个资源枯竭、精疲力竭、迫切需要改变的国家。

Rebuilding the Economy
重建经济

Labour’s central sales pitch is that it can turbocharge the economy and generate enough extra revenue from taxes to avoid deep cuts in public services, tax increases, or greater borrowing. But its levers for doing so are limited, particularly after its ambitious multi-billion-pound plan to transform Britain into a “green economy” fell victim earlier this year to the government’s weak financial position.
工党的核心卖点是，它可以大力推动经济发展，并从税收中获得足够的额外收入，以避免对公共服务进行大幅削减、增加税收或增加借贷。但工党这样做的手段有限，特别是在其雄心勃勃的“绿色经济”转型计划今年早些时候因政府疲弱的财政状况而搁浅后。

Another option would be to ease restrictions on trade with the European Union, which have hampered British exporters since Brexit. Yet Mr. Starmer has ruled out rejoining the bloc’s vast single economic market, since that would mean allowing people from Europe the freedom to live and work in Britain, or its Customs Union, which would mean accepting some of the bloc’s rules on tariffs and duties.
另一个选择是放松与欧盟的贸易限制，自英国脱欧以来，这些限制一直阻碍着英国出口商的发展。然而，斯塔默已经排除了重新加入欧盟庞大的单一经济市场的可能性，因为这意味着允许欧洲人自由地在英国或关税同盟生活和工作，并接受欧盟的一些关税规定。

While analysts said it should be possible for a Labour government to strike more limited deals, like a new trade pact on animal and plants that would help British food exporters, these would provide only a small boost to the economy.
尽管分析人士表示，工党政府应该有可能达成更有限的协议，比如一项有助于英国食品出口商的动植物贸易新协定，但这些协议对英国经济的提振作用很小。

That leaves a lot riding on another major Labour goal: overhauling Britain’s planning system to build more houses and speed up construction of public works projects. Labour is expected to review which parts of the countryside remain off limits to developers and restore targets for residential building in urban areas.
这将为工党的另一个主要目标留下很大余地——彻底改革英国的规划体系，建造更多房屋，加快公共工程项目的建设。预计工党将审查哪些农村地区仍禁止开发商进入，并恢复城市地区住宅建设的目标。

Rewriting the planning rules could unlock a building boom, economists said, but it would upset voters who want to protect green spaces.
经济学家表示，修改规划规则可能会引发建筑热潮，但会让希望保护绿地的选民感到不安。

Budget pressures would also complicate Labour’s efforts to fix the N.H.S., where the government failed to cut waiting times that stretch to months. Labour has promised to schedule 40,000 additional appointments a week, which it claims it can do by persuading N.H.S. workers to take on more appointments during off hours.
预算压力也会使工党修复国民医疗服务体系的努力复杂化，因为政府未能缩短长达数月的候诊时间。工党承诺每周增加4万个预约，并声称可以通过说服国民医疗服务体系员工在非工作时间接受更多预约来实现这一目标。

Labour said it would also hire 8,500 health workers to treat patients with mental health issues, as well as doubling the number of C.T. scanners and M.R.I. machines in hospitals. It would finance this by closing a loophole for people who claim non-domiciled status in Britain, allowing them to avoid paying some taxes.
工党表示，它还将雇用8500名医疗保健从业人员来治疗有精神健康问题的患者，并将医院的CT扫描仪和核磁共振仪的数量增加一倍。它将通过堵住非定居者逃税漏洞来为此筹集资金。

But its immediate challenge would be to resolve a long-festering wage dispute with junior doctors. After the government rejected their demands for a 35 percent wage increase, the doctors have repeatedly walked off the job, causing a cascade of canceled procedures and prolonging waiting times.
但眼下的挑战将是解决与初级医生之间旷日持久的工资纠纷。在政府拒绝他们加薪35%的要求后，医生们多次罢工，导致大量手术被取消，候诊时间延长。

Addressing Immigration
解决移民问题

Tackling immigration is another challenge for Labour, not least because of the labor shortages at the N.H.S. and throughout the economy. Controlling Britain’s borders was a big theme of the Brexit referendum, but net legal migration — the number of people who arrived, minus those who left — has roughly tripled since then, hitting ‌almost 750,000 in 2022, before falling back slightly.
解决移民问题是工党面临的另一个挑战，尤其是因为国民医疗服务体系和整个经济的劳动力短缺。控制英国边境是英国脱欧公投的一大主题，但自那以来，净合法移民——入境人数减去离境人数——大约增加了两倍，在2022年达到近75万人，之后略有回落。

Labour will benefit from changes introduced by the Conservative government, which restricted the right of students to bring relatives to Britain, and by the reduction in the number of refugees coming from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. All told, net migration is now expected to fall.
工党将从保守党政府引入的改革中受益，这些改革限制了学生带亲属前往英国的权利，并减少了来自乌克兰、香港和阿富汗的难民人数。总而言之，净移民预计将会下降。

But against that backdrop, Labour would have to work hard to fulfill its promise to train more people from Britain to fill job openings, and to dissuade employers from looking abroad for workers.
但在这种背景下，工党将必须努力履行承诺，培训更多的英国人来填补职位空缺，并劝阻雇主不要寻找境外工人。

Curbing the flow of asylum seekers landing in small boats on the English coastline would be harder still. Mr. Starmer has vowed to scrap a costly policy under which some asylum seekers would be put on one-way flights to Rwanda. Labour would instead try to crack down on people-smuggling gangs, while bolstering cooperation with authorities across continental Europe.
遏制乘坐小船登陆英国海岸线的寻求庇护者的流动将仍然比以往更为困难。斯塔默誓言要废除一项代价高昂的政策，根据这项政策，一些寻求庇护者将被送上飞往卢旺达的单程航班。取而代之的是，工党将努力打击人口走私团伙，同时加强与整个欧洲大陆的政府的合作。

Yet Britain has already given tens of millions of pounds to the French to help them stop the small boats, with only partial success. It also remains unclear how much scope there will be for better collaboration, with far-right, anti-immigration parties making striking gains in elections underway in France.
然而，英国已经向法国提供了数千万英镑，以帮助他们拦截偷渡小船，但只取得了部分成功。此外，由于极右翼反移民政党在法国正在进行的选举中取得了引人注目的进展，双方还能在多大程度上加强合作仍是个未知数。

At home, Britain faces a backlog of asylum applications, and the cost of housing some of those awaiting decisions, many in hotels, is around 8 million pounds, or $10.2 million, a day. Labour has promised to hire 1,000 new caseworkers to help remove those whose applications fail. But many are from countries that have no agreement with Britain to accept failed asylum seekers.
在国内，英国面临着庇护申请积压的问题，其中许多等待裁决的人住在酒店里，每天为他们支付的住宿费约为800万英镑。工党承诺新聘1000名个案工作者，帮助申请失败的人离开。但其中许多人的国家没有与英国签订接收申请失败者的协议。

Facing an Uncertain Ally
面对一个不确定的盟友

Any British leader would face an increasingly murky political landscape in the United States. The questions about President Biden’s viability as a candidate in the upcoming election have increased the odds that his Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, will recapture the presidency.
任何一位英国领导人都将面临越来越模糊的美国政治格局。拜登总统在即将到来的大选中作为候选人的可行性受到了质疑，这增加了他的共和党对手特朗普重新夺回总统宝座的可能性。

Labour’s top foreign policy official, David Lammy, has tried to cultivate people in Mr. Trump’s orbit, including Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio. But Mr. Lammy’s calling card in the United States is his close relationship with former President Barack Obama. The two men went to Harvard Law School, and Mr. Lammy campaigned for Mr. Obama during his first presidential campaign.
工党的外交政策高官戴维·拉米曾试图在特朗普身边的圈子里培养人脉，其中包括俄亥俄州共和党参议员J·D·万斯。但拉米在美国政坛的地位是依靠他与前总统奥巴马的密切关系。两人是哈佛法学院的同学，在奥巴马首次竞选总统期间，拉米曾为他助力。

Mr. Starmer’s ties to the United States are not as deep. While he does not have a history of critical remarks about Mr. Trump, there is little to suggest that a 61-year-old former chief prosecutor would develop a strong relationship with a 78-year-old man who is a defendant in multiple criminal cases.
斯塔默与美国的关系相较没有那么深厚。虽然他过去没有对特朗普发表过批评性言论，但没有什么迹象表明这位61岁的前首席检察官会与一位78岁的老人建立牢固的关系，后者是多起刑事案件的被告。

On Wednesday, however, Mr. Starmer won backing from another unlikely source: Rupert Murdoch. His influential London tabloid, The Sun, endorsed Labour for the first time in an election since 2005.
然而，本周三，斯塔默赢得了另一个意想不到的支持：鲁珀特·默多克。默多克旗下颇具影响力的伦敦小报《太阳报》自2005年以来首次在选举中支持工党。

“Time for a New Manager,” the Sun said on its front page, playing off the European soccer championship, in which England’s national team has struggled but remains in contention as it enters the quarterfinals.
《太阳报》在头版写道：“是时候换个新经理了。”这是一个借用欧洲足球锦标赛的文字游戏，英格兰国家队虽然在比赛中表现不佳，但在进入四分之一决赛后仍有希望。

“By dragging his party back to the center ground of British politics for first time since Tony Blair was in No. 10,” the paper said, “Sir Keir has won the right to take charge.”
“自托尼·布莱尔担任首相之后，基尔爵士首次将他的政党拉回了英国政治的中间派立场，”该报写道。“他赢得了掌权的资格。”
(本新闻网址：https://www.geilien.cn/news/2024/nyoptimism.html)

Mark Landler是时报伦敦分社社长，报道英国新闻以及美国在欧洲、亚洲和中东的外交政策。他从事新闻工作已超过30年。

Stephen Castle是时报驻伦敦记者，广泛撰写关于英国、英国政治以及该国与欧洲关系的报道。

翻译：纽约时报中文网