英国大选上一次出现如此不确定的结果还是30多年前的事情。自1974年2月，用"谁在统治英国"这个问题作为竞选口号（当然，答案是"不是你们"）的爱德华•希斯(Edward Heath)失掉大选以来，英国两大政党还没有出现过同时失去众议院多数席位的情况。
但这次大选结果只对一种人是个意外——那就是被主流媒体铺天盖地的大选报道所左右的的受众。事实证明，自由民主党领袖尼克•克莱格(Nick Clegg)尽管在英国历史上的首次首相电视辩论中大出风头，这对大选结果却根本无关紧要。实际上，他的政党丢掉了5个席位。
英国经济的低迷状态，几乎肯定会导致工党落败，但这不足以让大卫•卡梅伦(David Cameron)的保守党获得多数席位。正如数月前对英国选举地图(electoral map)进行认真研究的学生们所预测的那样，选举形势从根本上不利于保守党。这些因素包括人口结构及密度的变化、小党派的发展、保守党在苏格兰完全失去选票、以及后撒切尔时代担心保守党上台后削减支出的大量民众——所有这些因素加起来，让卡梅伦不太可能在此次大选中获得全胜。
卡梅伦经常因其坚定支持"一族"(One Nation)中间路线而受到党内右翼的批评。但很难相信的是，在一个保守党不再天然占据多数席位的国家里，还有其它任何策略，能让该党获得更多席位。
现在应该怎么办？对某些评论员而言，这次大选结果看起来非常"欧洲化"。第三党派——自由民主党(Liberal Democrats)现在处于举足轻重的地位，正如战后德国的自由民主党(Free Democrat)一样。目前英国的选择似乎是蓝黄联盟（指工党和自民党联盟）或红黄联盟（保守党和自民党联盟）。无论哪种选择，最终我们都会获得某种"比例代表制"。这可能会让自由民主党在政府中近乎永久地占据一席。
但克莱格真的有足够大的本事，能推动两大政党中的一家进行选举改革吗？我看未必。保守党将不会从选举改革中受益，也不信任这种改革。戈登•布朗(Gordon Brown)或许会未改革提供支持，但自民党-工党联盟既缺乏多数席位，又缺乏合法性。
即使抛开公关关系不提，一个卡梅伦-克莱格联盟是否建立在足够多的共同点上？肯定不是。两党仅在一些小事上意见一致。在重大问题上，尤其是在欧洲事务和移民问题上，它们的主张大相径庭。
而且如果卡梅伦希望以一种真正惠及本党的方式改革选举制度，他也不会依靠克莱格——他会依靠苏格兰首席大臣亚历克斯•萨尔蒙德(Alex Salmond)。对卡梅伦而言，真正大胆的行动将是给予苏格兰民族党(Scottish National party)独立地位，取消苏格兰议员在威斯敏特议会中的席位，让苏格兰脱离英国，这样他将拥有多数席位治理英格兰、威尔士和北爱尔兰。
然而，我认为这不是谨慎的卡梅伦将会选择的道路。以下是他的其它3项选择。
1，像德比勋爵那样，成立少数派政府。
要施行这种策略，就必须通读安东尼•特罗洛普(Anthony Trollope)的Palliser系列小说。特罗洛普写作这些小说之际，保守党由于在自由贸易问题上的分歧只能作为少数派执政。十四世德比勋爵面临执政3届弱势政府的艰巨任务，而当时的辉格党和自由党正在就反政教分离主义或石勒苏益格-荷尔斯泰因问题(Schleswig-Holstein)这类神秘问题争吵不休。
然而，这是我最不喜欢的选择，因为它让维多利亚时代的保守党在之后20多年间一直低迷不振，直到自由党最终因"爱尔兰地方自治方案"分裂、以及统一党改变立场为止。
2，像斯坦利•鲍德温(Stanley Baldwin)一样，组建"国民政府"。
另一个办法将是组建"国民政府"——这是一个明显带有广泛基础的联盟，而实际上将成为保守党的一个执政工具。在大萧条(Great Depression)年代，这个策略对斯坦利•鲍德温非常有效，让保守党执政了14年。与1931年时一样，这种策略旨在通过引诱中间分子支持紧急经济举措，来分裂自由党和工党。
这种做法的困难在于，它需要布朗扮演拉姆齐•麦克唐纳(Ramsay MacDonald)的角色——麦克唐纳在被自己的政党除名后，在1931年至1935年间继续担任首相。将布朗驱逐出唐宁街已经够难了，而更难让人相信的是，他肯作为第二位背叛工党运动的来自苏格兰的领导人而被载入史册。
3，像哈罗德•威尔逊(Harold Wilson)一样，重新大选或退出。
卡梅伦的第三个、也是最具吸引力的选择，是尝试威尔逊在1974年2月之后的策略。当时保守党明显输掉了大选，但工党离多数席位还差30多个席位，于是威尔逊组建了少数派政府，并在8个月后要求再次举行大选。这种做法奏效了，尽管非常险——工党仅比其它所有政党多出3个席位。必须指出的是，我们目前的局面与1974年的情形有着令人不安的相似。时任首相爱德华•希斯(Edward Heath)不仅被赎罪日(Yom Kippur)战争之后的油价上涨所拖累，还受到了由自己的财政大臣安东尼•巴伯(Anthony Barber)吹大的泡沫的影响。有欠考虑的宽松的货币政策使得房价和股市均出现大幅上涨。当巴伯随后由"放"转为"收"的时候，资产市场崩溃导致了次级银行业危机。在软弱的工党政府随后的执政期中，英国经济经历了5年的滞涨。通胀水平飙升至近27%。公共债务大幅飙升至失控的地步，以致于在1976年，英国不得不请求国际货币基金组织(IMF)援助。
英国现在正站在一个更陡峭的悬崖之上，对此卡梅伦肯定再清楚不过了。布朗虽然自诩是富有远见的财政大臣，在金融危机中"拯救了世界"，但他对英国经济的管理却是一场灾难。
据花旗银行(Citigroup)预测，在2010-11财年，英国政府的赤字水平将达到1670亿英镑左右，约占国内生产总值(GDP)的11.3%。英国在和平时期从未出现过这么高的赤字水平。这样的数据本身已经糟糕透顶，放在国际背景下，就更是匪夷所思了。
去年，英国经周期性调整的基本赤字（不含利息支付）为发达国家中第二高，占GDP的6.8%，仅低于美国。希腊的这一比例是6%。
只有两点让人庆幸。第一，英国净国际投资是正值，经常项目赤字也不高。因此，外国投资者匆忙撤离的风险低于希腊。第二，英国没有加入欧洲货币联盟（这或许是布朗任内唯一英明的决策），因此保留了让本币贬值的权利，而且，如果债券投资者不够警觉的话，英国还能够通过制造通胀来减轻部分债务负担。但这只是小小的安慰，不是吗？
事实是，新政府将别无选择，只能大幅削减开支和增加税收，而这些举措的程度要比任何一个政党在大选中敢于提议的都大得多。
以上三个选择中，没有一个具有不可抗拒的吸引力。假设卡梅伦选择第三个选项，要在8个月苦苦节衣缩食后让保守党赢得第二次选举，难度将非常之大。
但是，很难想出还有什么更好的办法，能够让保守党从这次希望不大的选举结果中，获取更大的胜算。一个威尔逊式的保守党政府，肯定比德比勋爵或鲍德温再世要好。
本文作者是哈佛大学劳伦斯•A•蒂什(Laurence A. Tisch)历史学教授、FT特约编辑
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001032539
It has been a generation since the British electorate delivered such an inconclusive result at a general election. Not since Edward Heath posed the question "Who Governs Britain?" in February 1974 – the answer, of course, was "Not you" – has one of the two major parties failed to secure a majority in the House of Commons.
But this election result was only a surprise to consumers of mainstream media hype. It turned out that all the brouhaha about the performance of Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, in the first presidential-style television debate mattered not a jot. Indeed, his party lost five seats.
The dire state of the economy all but guaranteed a Labour defeat but it was not sufficient to give David Cameron's Conservatives a majority. The fundamental skew of the electoral map against the Tories denied it to them, just as serious students of the subject had predicted months ago. Changes in demography and population density; the growth of small parties; the extinction of the Conservative vote in Scotland; and the post-Thatcher critical mass of people who fear Tory cuts – these factors together always made it unlikely that Mr Cameron would win this election outright.
The Tory leader has often been criticised from the right of the party for his unwavering "One Nation" centrism. But it is hard to believe that any other strategy would have delivered more seats in a country that no longer has a natural Conservative majority.
Now what? To some commentators, this looks like a very European result. The third-party Liberal Democrats hold the balance of power, just as their Free Democrat counterparts frequently have in Germany since the war. Britain's choice now, it seems, is between a blue-yellow coalition or a red-yellow one. Either way, we are going to end up with some version of proportional representation. That could make the Lib Dems a near-permanent fixture in government.
But does Mr Clegg really have the leverage to extract electoral reform from one of the two big parties? I think not. The Tories wouldn't benefit from it and disbelieve in it. The incorrigibly cynical Gordon Brown might offer it, but a Lib-Lab coalition would lack both a majority and legitimacy.
Even aside from PR, is there enough common ground for a Cameron-Clegg coalition? Surely not. The two parties agree only on minor issues. On the big stuff, notably Europe and immigration, they are miles apart.
And if Mr Cameron wanted to change the rules of the electoral game in a way that would really benefit his own party, it would not be Mr Clegg he would turn to, but Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister. A really bold stroke would be for Mr Cameron to write Scotland off by offering the Scottish National party independence and getting rid of the Scots MPs at Westminster, at which point he would have a majority to govern England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
However, I suspect this is not a road the cautious Mr Cameron will choose. So here are three other options:
1. Lord Derby: Minority Rules
To prepare for option 1, a thorough immersion in Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels is recommended. Trollope's saga is set at a time when the Conservatives could govern only as a minority because of their split over Free Trade. It was the hard task of the 14th Earl of Derby to preside over three fragile governments that came into existence only when the Whigs and Liberals quarrelled over such mysteries as anti-disestablishmentarianism or the Schleswig-Holstein question.
This is my least favourite option, however, since it condemned the Victorian Tories to more than two decades of weakness until the Liberals finally split over Irish Home Rule and the Unionists switched sides.
2. Stanley Baldwin: A National Government
Another course of action would be to form a "national government" – an apparently broad-based coalition which is, in fact, a vehicle for Conservative rule. This worked beautifully for Stanley Baldwin in the teeth of the Great Depression, effectively putting the Tories in power for 14 years. The aim would be, as in 1931, to split both the Liberals and Labour by luring centrists into supporting emergency economic measures.
The difficulty is that this would require Mr Brown to play the part of Ramsay MacDonald, who stayed on as prime minister between 1931 and 1935, having been expelled from his own party. Hard though it is proving to eject Mr Brown from Downing Street, it is harder to believe that he wants to go down in history as the second Scottish leader to betray the Labour movement.
3. Harold Wilson: Double or Quits
Mr Cameron's third and most attractive option is to try a version of Harold Wilson's strategy after February 1974. The Conservatives clearly lost that election, but Labour were more than 30 seats short of a majority. Wilson formed a minority government and then called a general election eight months later. It worked – just. Labour outnumbered the other parties by just three seats. It must be said that there's an unnerving similarity between our predicament today and the situation in 1974. Heath was destroyed not just by the oil price rise that followed the Yom Kippur war; he was also destroyed by the bubble inflated by Anthony Barber, his chancellor. House prices and the stock market both soared as a result of ill-advised monetary relaxation. When Barber then switched from "go" to "stop", asset markets crashed triggering the secondary banking crisis. A weak Labour government then presided over five years of stagflation. Inflation surged to nearly 27 per cent. Public borrowing spiralled so far out of control that in 1976 the International Monetary Fund had to be called in.
Mr Cameron must be only too aware of how close to the edge of an even steeper precipice Britain now is. For all his self-promotion as a prudent chancellor and the man who "saved the world" when the financial crisis struck, Mr Brown's stewardship of the British economy has been a disaster.
According to Citigroup forecasts, the government deficit will be about £167bn in 2010-11. That is about 11.3 per cent of gross domestic product. Those figures – which are without precedent in peacetime – are quite bad enough in themselves. Put in international context, they are mind-boggling.
Last year, the UK had the second-largest cyclically adjusted primary deficit (excluding interest payments) in the developed world (6.8 per cent of GDP). Only the US has a bigger budgetary hole. The Greek figure was 6 per cent.
There are only two consolations. First, the UK's net international investment position is positive and its current account deficit modest. The risk of a rush for the exits by foreign investors is, therefore, smaller than in the Greek case. Second, Britain did not join the European Monetary Union – perhaps Mr Brown's only good decision as chancellor – and so retains the right to let its currency depreciate and (if bond investors are unwary) the power to inflate away a part of its debt burden. Small comfort, isn't it?
The reality is that the new government will have no choice but to implement far tougher spending cuts and tax rises than any party dared to propose during the election.
None of these options is irresistibly attractive. It will be extremely hard for the Tories to win a second election after eight months of agonising austerity.
But it is hard to think of a better way to fashion a decent stretch of Conservative government from the unpromising result of this election. Better surely to be a Tory Wilson than to be a second Derby or Baldwin.
The writer is the Laurence A. Tisch, professor of history at Harvard and a contributing editor of the FT
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