新任英国首相的第一天

Nukes and King Charles—but no door key

The first 24 hours for a new British prime minister are odd, and busy

It may well be the world’s least pleasant multiple-choice question. Imagine that London has been destroyed by a nuclear bomb. Millions of Londoners are dead. What Britain’s nuclear submarines do next is your decision. Do you a) retaliate? b) not retaliate? or c) wimp out, and let the submarine’s captain decide? If Labour wins the election on July 4th (this article was published before the results were known), at some point on the following day, in a room in 10 Downing Street, Sir Keir Starmer will have to answer this question. Then, very possibly, he will have to pop upstairs to his new flat to unpack his socks and decide where his sofa should go.

这可能是世界上最不愉快的多选题。想象一下，伦敦被一颗核弹摧毁。数百万伦敦人死亡。接下来英国的核潜艇应该做什么，由你决定。你会选择 a) 报复？b) 不报复？还是 c) 退缩，让潜艇的舰长决定？如果工党在7月4日的大选中获胜（本文发表于选举结果公布前），那么在第二天的某个时候，基尔·斯塔默爵士将在唐宁街10号的一个房间里不得不回答这个问题。然后，很可能他还得上楼到他的新公寓，解开他的袜子，决定沙发应该放在哪里。

A British prime minister’s first day is, to put it mildly, odd. If you are the French president you have a week or two to prepare for power; if you are the American, over two months. The British pm has about an hour. From the moment that an outgoing leader resigns, the incoming one begins a day that includes popping to Buckingham Palace; taking a call from the American president; moving house; and writing the “letters of last resort” in which each British pm decides what to do in the event of Armageddon. It is, says Alastair Campbell, Sir Tony Blair’s former spokesman, “a pretty stressful day”.

英国首相的第一天，可以说是非常奇怪的。如果你是法国总统，你有一两周的时间来准备掌权；如果你是美国总统，有两个月的时间。英国首相大约只有一个小时。从现任领导人辞职的那一刻起，新任领导人就开始了一天的工作，包括去白金汉宫；接听美国总统的电话；搬家；和写“最后的遗书”，每位英国首相都要决定在世界末日时该怎么办。托尼·布莱尔爵士的前发言人阿拉斯泰尔·坎贝尔说：“这是相当紧张的一天。”

It begins with a call to the king. Once the election result is known (it is never officially announced, but merely becomes manifest) a losing prime minister will ring the monarch to request an audience. He will then travel to Buckingham Palace and tell Charles III that he has lost the confidence of Parliament. Minutes later, his replacement will arrive for the “kissing hands” ceremony. The phrase is now mere metaphor but the kiss was always supposed to be perfunctory, not passionate. Sir Tony was told that he should “brush” the queen’s hands with his lips, a verb he found so distractingly baffling that, while puzzling over it, he tripped over a piece of carpet and landed squarely on that same royal hand, less brushing than “enveloping” it.

它始于给国王的电话。一旦选举结果确定（从未正式宣布，而只是显现出来），失败的首相将打电话给君主请求接见。然后，他将前往白金汉宫，告诉查尔斯三世他失去了议会的信任。几分钟后，他的继任者将到达进行“亲吻礼”仪式。宫廷侍从警告新首相，亲吻应该是敷衍的，而不是充满激情的。托尼爵士被告知他应该用嘴唇“轻轻触碰”（brush）女王的手，这个动词让他感到如此困惑，以至于在思索时，他绊倒在一块地毯上，直接摔在了那只皇家手上，与其说是“轻触”，不如说是“包围”了它。

Although the time between quitting and kissing is brief—almost always under an hour—that is still too long for intelligence services who, as one insider puts it, really like to know “who’s actually running the country at a particular minute of the day”. That is just in case, says Gus O’Donnell, a former cabinet secretary, there is a plane “heading towards Canary Wharf… and we wanted to shoot it down”. So fudges are made: the outgoing pm retains some powers until the new pm has kissed the kingly hand; in extremis a new pm can be anointed over the phone. (This approach was considered for Liz Truss, since the queen was so ill.)

尽管辞职和亲吻之间的时间很短——几乎总是不到一个小时——但对于情报部门来说，这仍然太长了，因为他们“真的想知道在一天中的某一特定时刻到底是谁在掌控国家”。前内阁秘书加斯·奥唐奈说，这是以防万一有飞机“飞向金丝雀码头……我们想把它击落”。所以会有一些权宜之计：离任首相会保留一些权力，直到新首相亲吻国王的手；在极端情况下，新首相可以通过电话被任命。（考虑到女王健康状况不佳，这种方法曾为丽兹·特拉斯考虑过。）

From this moment on a new prime minister will officially have “the keys to Downing Street”, as the phrase has it. Except, as Mr Campbell points out, he won’t: “There are no keys.” They are not needed, for the entrance is manned 24 hours a day. Watch the new pm walk towards the (lockless) Downing Street door, just after he has given his first speech in the role to the assembled media. As if in a haunted house, it will swing open before it is touched. (Or so everyone hopes. When David Cameron infamously hummed a tune after his Brexit resignation speech outside Downing Street in 2016, this was not from insouciance but, says Sir Craig Oliver, his former director of communications, from terror that “the door wasn’t going to open and that he’d be…left standing there.” He hummed as a way of “filling the…blank”.)

从这一刻起，新首相将正式拥有“唐宁街的钥匙”，如同这个短语所说。但正如坎贝尔先生指出的，他并不会真的有钥匙：“没有钥匙。”因为入口处24小时有人值守。观察新首相走向（没有锁的）唐宁街大门，当他在角色中首次向媒体发表讲话后。就像在一个鬼屋里，它会在被触碰前自动打开。（或者所有人都希望如此。当大卫·卡梅伦在2016年唐宁街外发表脱欧辞职演讲后哼了一首曲子时，这并不是因为无所谓，而是因为他的前通讯总监克雷格·奥利弗爵士说，他害怕“门不会开，他会……站在那里。”他哼歌是为了“填补……空白”。）

Behind that door, Downing Street will have been busy. “It’s like being in a country-house hotel,” says Lord Stewart Wood, a former adviser to Gordon Brown, another ex-pm. “You’ve got to do the cleaning quickly before the next guests arrive.” Very quickly. The Downing Street turnaround plan allows about 30 minutes for offices and desks to be cleared and cleaned. As in any hotel, things sometimes slip through: in 2010 the outgoing chief secretary to the Treasury left a note in his desk that read: “I’m afraid there is no money.”

在那扇门背后，唐宁街将忙碌起来。“这就像在一个乡村酒店里，”前首相戈登·布朗的前顾问斯图尔特·伍德勋爵说。“你必须在下一个客人到来前迅速打扫干净。”非常迅速。唐宁街的周转计划允许大约30分钟清理和清洁办公室和办公桌。像在任何酒店一样，有时会有疏漏：2010年，离任财政大臣在他的办公桌上留下了一张便条，上面写着：“恐怕没有钱了。”

The aesthetic of Downing Street is slightly shabby country-house-hotel, too. Insiders describe its smell as “stuffy” (windows are covered in netting and kept shut, in case of bombs); carpets are held together with silver gaffer tape. For years, the first thing visiting dignitaries saw when the door swung open was, says Sir Craig, “a big tea stain” on the carpet. No one dared replace it for fear of getting “eviscerated in the press” for extravagance.

唐宁街的美学也是略显破旧的乡村酒店风格。内部人士形容其气味“闷热”（窗户被纱帘覆盖并保持关闭，以防炸弹）；地毯用银色胶带固定。多年来，当大门打开时，来访的贵宾们首先看到的是，克雷格爵士说，“地毯上的一个大茶渍”。没有人敢更换它，担心会因奢侈而被媒体炮轰。

The overall attitude is, says Lord O’Donnell “pretty hair-shirt”. The pm’s family not only pays council tax on their famous address; they also do their own cooking and, when the time comes, arrange their own removal van. The timing is tricky: pack your children’s toys too soon and “that will leak”, says Sir Craig. But on the day itself the outgoing pm’s possessions—plates, bedding, pants and all—must be carried through the front door. British political careers end not merely in failure but in bubblewrap.

整体态度是，奥唐奈勋爵说，“非常简朴”。首相的家人不仅要为他们著名的住处支付市政税；他们还自己做饭，到了时候还要自己安排搬家公司。时机非常微妙：太早打包孩子的玩具“会泄露消息”，克雷格爵士说。但在当天，离任首相的所有物品——盘子、床上用品、内裤等等——必须通过前门搬走。英国的政治生涯不仅以失败告终，还以气泡膜结束。

While all that is going on, Britain’s new leader will be chatting to other prime ministers and presidents; choosing the room he will use as his office; and (unless he requests more time to think it over) being sat down to handwrite posthumous instructions that are transported in sealed letters to each of the country’s four Trident submarines. Lord O’Donnell, who has shepherded two pms through this process, tells them to “make sure it’s clear”; if ever there was a time for legible handwriting and intelligible prose, this is it. As Lord Cameron observed, when it comes to the letter, “it is you in the office on your own”. Your prime ministerial career has begun. ■

在这一切进行的同时，英国的新领导人将与其他首相和总统聊天；选择他将用作办公室的房间；以及（除非他要求更多时间考虑）被安排手写末日到来时的身后指示，这些指示将被密封在信中，运送到该国的四艘“三叉戟”潜艇中。奥唐奈勋爵曾带领两位首相完成这一过程，他告诉他们要“确保书写清晰”；如果有一个时候需要清晰可辨的笔迹和易懂的文字，那就是现在。正如卡梅伦勋爵所观察到的，当开始写这封信时，“这个办公室就是你的了”。你的首相生涯已经开始。■

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