英國板塊
Bagehot
白芝浩專欄
A certain idea of Britain
對英國的某種看法
General de Gaulle has some important lessons for Boris Johnson
戴高樂將軍對鮑里斯·約翰遜的一些重要的借鑒作用
Boris johnson is taking a fortnight’s holiday in Scotland, armed with a volume of Lucretius, William Boyd’s novel “Any Human Heart” and Brendan Simms’s “Britain’s Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation”. Few would begrudge him his break: he has lived a lifetime in the past year, having got divorced and remarried, had another child, almost died of covid-19 and struggled with the worst crisis since the second world war. But Bagehot would nevertheless suggest adding a fourth book to his pile—Julian Jackson’s “A Certain Idea of France: The Life of De Gaulle”. Though hefty, the book is enthralling, and offers a wealth of ideas with which to fill the empty box labelled “Johnsonism”.
鮑里斯·約翰遜正在蘇格蘭度假兩周，他帶著一本盧克萊修的書、還有威廉·博伊德的《赤子之心》、以及布倫丹·西姆斯的《Britain’s Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation》。幾乎沒有人會對他的休假感到不滿：在過去的一年里，他把自己的一生都給過了，離婚又再婚，又生了一個孩子，幾乎死于新冠肺炎，還與二戰以來爆發的最嚴重的危機作斗爭。但是筆者還是建議在他的書集里再加上第四本書——朱利安·杰克遜的《法國的一個想法:夏爾·戴高樂的生活》。這本書雖然篇幅宏大，卻引人入勝，還蘊含豐富的思想，可以填補“約翰遜主義”的空白。
Mr Johnson is keen on great men. He has written a biography of his hero Churchill and, modesty not coming naturally to a man who as a child announced that he would become “world king”, has recently taken to comparing himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt. But in many ways de Gaulle is a better fit than either. The French president saw eye to eye with Britain’s prime minister on the biggest issues.He regarded the nation-state as the basic building-block of civilisation. He opposed Britain’s membership of the EU on the grounds that Britain by its nature “looks to the sea, towards wider horizons”. He devoted his post-war career to restoring confidence and dynamism to a country that had lost the first in the war and had fallen behind in the second for decades.
約翰遜崇敬偉人。他曾為英雄丘吉爾寫了一本傳記，約翰遜并不是天性謙遜的的人，他打小就宣稱自己將成為“世界之王”，他最近將自己自比為富蘭克林·德拉諾·羅斯福。但從很多方面來看，相比這兩者，約翰遜更像戴高樂。這位法國總統在一些最大的問題上，與英國首相意見一致。戴高樂認為單一民族的獨立國家是文明的基本組成部分。他反對英國加入歐盟，理由是英國本質上“以英吉利海峽為天塹，冷眼旁觀于歐陸霸權棋局之外”。二戰致使法國喪失了一流大國的地位，并落后淪為二流國家幾十年，戰后，戴高樂在任時一直致力于恢復法國的信心和活力。
Though Britain’s situation is hardly as desperate as France’s in 1945, there are similarities. The 2016 referendum spoke of profound dissatisfaction with the old regime. Confidence in national institutions is at a low ebb. Sections of the left identify “Britishness” with slavery and plunder while sections of the right want to build walls against modernity.
盡管英國并沒有像1945年的法國那樣處于絕境，但兩者的處境也有相似之處。2016年的公投談到了對舊政權的深刻不滿。人們對國家機構的信心沉入低谷。英國的左翼人士將“英國國民性”與奴隸制和掠奪等同起來，而右翼人士則想要建造一堵反對現代性的墻。
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