英國退歐對於英國國內意味着什麼

Twenty years ago I had lunch in London with a senior civil servant. This was at the tail-end of the decadent London lunching era and, after a lot of wine, he asked me what I thought of the minister he worked for. I said I’d interviewed the minister and he seemed a nice bloke. “The man”, said the civil servant, leaning across the table for emphasis, “is an animal!”

20年前我與一名英國高級公務員在倫敦共進午餐。那是在倫敦頹廢的午餐時代行將終結的時期，在喝下不少紅酒後，他問我對他所效力的那位部長的看法。我說我曾採訪過那位部長，他看起來是個不錯的傢伙。“那個人，”這名公務員從桌子那頭探身過來強調說：“是個禽獸！”

Anyone who remembers the 1980s television comedy series Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister knows that British civil servants and ministers are forever locked in a silent power struggle. That struggle will shape the form that Brexit ultimately takes. British voters chose Brexit; Theresa May’s new government has promised to implement it. But, in practice, civil servants will mostly sort out how exactly it is done. And these people are good at getting their way.

凡是記得80年代兩部電視喜劇《是，大臣》(Yes Minister)和《是，首相》(Yes, Prime Minister)的人，都知道英國的公務員和部長級官員們永遠陷入無聲的權力鬥爭。這種鬥爭將塑造英國退歐的最終形式。英國選民選擇了退歐；特里薩•梅(Theresa May)的新政府承諾會執行這一結果。但在實踐中，主要將由公務員們決定具體該做什麼。而這些人很善於達到目的。

In the first episode of Yes, Prime Minister, the new prime minister, Jim Hacker, egged on by the government’s chief scientific adviser, concocts a whizzo scheme for a conscription army. Hacker, delighted with himself, exclaims: “Why didn’t I think of this before?” and the chief scientific adviser replies: “Because we only just met.”

在《是，首相》的第一集中，新任首相Jim Hacker受政府首席科學顧問的慫恿，炮製了一個徵兵入伍的絕妙方案。自以爲是的Hacker感慨說：“我爲什麼早沒想到呢？”對此首席科學顧問回答說：“因爲我們纔剛認識。”

That’s the relationship between civil servants and their minister in a nutshell: they know more than he does.

這句話概括了公務員和部長級官員之間的關係：他們知道的比部長多。

All of this is wonderfully explained in a surprise bestseller that appeared in Germany this year, 18 years after the death of its author, the sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Der neue Chef (“The New Boss”) is a collection of some of Luhmann’s 1960s writings on the art of what we would now call “managing up”. The book is quietly, almost silently humorous. Luhmann starts with the scenario that now faces British civil servants: the arrival of a new boss. This, says Luhmann, is “one of the few exciting events in everyday bureaucracy”.

這一切在今年德國一本意外登上暢銷榜的著作中有絕妙解釋，該書作者、社會學家尼克拉斯•盧曼(Niklas Luhmann)已在18年前去世。《新老闆》(Der neue Chef)收集了盧曼在60年代就我們如今稱爲“向上管理”(managing up)藝術撰寫的一些文章。該書流露出安靜到幾乎無聲的幽默。盧曼以英國公務員如今面臨的場景——即一個新老闆的到來——作爲開頭。盧曼說，這是“官僚機構的日常生活中爲數不多的令人興奮的事情之一”。

Luhmann advises any underling feeling awed by his boss: “It is helpful to imagine that one’s superior has no clothes on.” Then, he says, the underling should realise that leaders lack time and capacity to lead: “Their attention has its limits too, their day too has only 24 hours . . . The superior would be lost if the underlings passed all problems on to the top.” Because underlings outnumber leaders, they have more decision-making capacity.

盧曼向所有對上司感到敬畏的下屬建議：“設想你的上級沒穿衣服，這會有所幫助。”然後，他說下屬應該意識到，領導者並沒有足夠的時間和能力去領導：“他們的注意力也是有限度的，他們的一天也只有24個小時……如果下屬把所有問題都扔給上司，上司將會暈頭轉向。”因爲下屬在人數上超過領導，所以他們有更大決策能力。

This is how British ministries traditionally function. The typical minister takes office knowing almost nothing about his ministry’s actual work. His main aim is to avoid getting into trouble either with the prime minister or — more importantly — with the tabloids. The civil servants’ aim is to make the big decisions. Chris Mullin, a Labour minister under Tony Blair, described in his 2009 memoir A View From the Foothills how this works. Every day Mullin’s private secretary would place files in his in-tray, “usually with a little handwritten note attached, boiling the issue down to a single sentence”. Each file came with the civil servants’ recommendation. “All I have to do”, wrote Mullin, “is signify agreement or disagreement by making my mark on the top of the page.” Usually, he signified agreement.

這是英國政府部門傳統的運作方式。典型的部長級官員在上任時對自己部門的實際工作一無所知。他的主要目標是避免捲入與首相或小報（後者更重要）的是非。公務員們的目標是作出重大決策。曾在託尼•布萊爾(Tony Blair)的工黨政府擔任部長級官員的克里斯•穆林(Chris Mullin)在2009年出版的回憶錄《從山麓外望》(A View from the Foothills)一書中描述了這一切是如何運作的。穆林的私人助理每天會把文件放在他的待處理文件欄中，“通常都附帶一張手寫的小便條，把事情濃縮成一句話”。每份文件都附帶着公務員們的建議。“我所要做的，”穆林寫道：“就是在文件頁首標明我同意還是不同意。”通常，他都表示同意。

The new government will have to make bigger decisions than Mullin ever did. Brexit is the British civil service’s largest ever peacetime project. A bureaucracy shrunk by the Tories will now have to unpick 40 years of European law and negotiate a new relationship with the EU, while also conducting trade talks with half the world.

英國新政府要做的決定比當年穆林面臨的任何決定都更重大。“退歐”將是英國公務員團隊在和平時期的最大項目。在保守黨執政期間縮了水的官僚機構，現在將不得不擺脫40年來英國引入的歐盟法律，與歐盟談判建立新的關係，同時還要與半個世界展開貿易談判。

The basic question for the UK is: what kind of Brexit do you want? Do you want to be like Norway, with full access to the European single market but no limits on European immigration? Or do you want to be more like Moldova, shut off from the single market but also from immigration? The politicians don’t want to make this choice, because the Moldova option would mean economic decline and the Norway option would upset anti-immigrant voters. Nor does May want to call a general election to clarify the choice.

英國面臨的根本問題是：你想要哪種形式的退歐？是想要跟挪威一樣，有歐洲單一市場的全面准入，但對歐洲移民不加限制？還是想跟摩爾多瓦一樣，退出單一市場但也徹底隔絕移民？政客們不想作這個選擇，因爲摩爾多瓦模式將意味着經濟衰退，而挪威模式則會激怒反移民的選民。首相梅也不願提前舉行大選以澄清選擇。

That means that for the next few years, the Norway-or-Moldova choice will likely be made on a messy case-by-case basis by civil servants. Usually, the minister will just signify agreement.

這意味着，在未來幾年中，挪威還是摩爾多瓦模式的選擇，很可能會由公務員們在亂糟糟的個案基礎上作出。通常情況下，部長只會表示同意。

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Senior civil servants are educated people living in London, so they probably didn’t vote for Brexit. Indeed, Whitehall’s most powerful department, the Treasury, made a public case against it. If civil servants are left to handle the negotiations, Brexit will end up looking more like Norway than Moldova.

高級公務員是生活在倫敦的受過良好教育的人，所以他們很可能沒有投票支持“退歐”。的確，白廳最強大的部門財政部曾公開反對退歐。如果讓公務員們來談判，“英國退歐”到頭來會更像挪威而不是摩爾多瓦。

The civil servants’ boring decisions — for instance, on the precise legal form of any British “immigration brake” — probably won’t get much attention from Britain’s true rulers, the tabloids. As the FT’s political editor George Parker has remarked, these papers have almost no correspondents in Brussels despite their insistence that Britain is run from there. Nor is the British public very interested in granular technocratic detail, judging by the largely fact-free campaign for Brexit.

公務員們的枯燥決定（例如有關英國“移民剎車”的確切法律形式），可能不會得到英國真正的統治者——小報的太多關注。正如英國《金融時報》的政治編輯喬治•派克(George Parker)點評的那樣，這些報紙在布魯塞爾幾乎沒有外派記者，儘管它們堅稱英國受那裏遙控。從脫歐陣營基本不符事實的拉票宣傳來看，英國民衆對技術官僚層面的細枝末節也並不十分感興趣。

In Yes, Prime Minister, the all-powerful civil servant Sir Humphrey ensures that Hacker’s whizzo conscription scheme never happens. Now, by executing Brexit, Sir Humphrey can take back control of his country.

在《是，首相》中，全能公務員Humphrey爵士確保了Hacker的絕妙徵兵計劃不會發生。現在，通過執行“退歐”，Humphrey爵士能真正收回對自己國家的掌控。