與FT共進午餐 梅麗布萊克 Lunch with the FT: Mhairi Black

It is the hottest day of the year and my guest has been delivered to the restaurant by a perspiring middle-aged man whom I recognise as the leader of the Scottish National Party’s band of MPs in the House of Commons. Less than half his age, shorter and cooler, she is dressed in something of a uniform: dark blue trousers and jacket and a light blue shirt, her fair hair pulled tight to her head. She’s worn much the same thing in every photo of her I’ve seen in the press.

這是一年中最熱的一天。我的客人梅麗布萊克(Mhairi Black)是由一位滿頭大汗的中年男士送到餐館的。這位中年人我認得，他是蘇格蘭民族黨(Scottish National Party)英國議會下院(House of Commons)議員團隊的領導人。而布萊克的年紀還不到他的一半，身材更矮小一些，神態更冷靜一些，身上的穿着則有點像制服：深藍色的褲子和外套、以及一件淺藍色的襯衫，一頭淺色的頭髮緊貼着頭部。這身着裝，和我在媒體上見到的她的每張照片都差不多。

She will shortly be making her maiden speech — since viewed online more than 10m times — but Mhairi Black is already a political sensation. The newly elected MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South pulled off the most dramatic of the SNP’s many victories in the May general election when she defenestrated Douglas Alexander. Ed Miliband’s chief election strategist, Alexander had been sitting on a majority of 16,000, looking forward to being foreign secretary in the next Labour government. Suddenly he found himself dethroned.

很快，布萊克就要發表她的首次演說了————在那之前，她已在網上被點擊過逾一千萬次。不過，她早已是政治上的轟動話題。在今年5月的大選中，這位新當選的佩斯利與倫弗魯郡南選區(Paisley and Ranfrewshire South)議員擊敗了道格拉斯騠虎煓大(Douglas Alexander)。這是蘇格蘭民族黨衆多勝利中最具戲劇性的一幕。此前，亞歷山大始終坐擁1.6萬多數票，正等着在下屆工黨政府中擔任外交大臣，突然之間卻發現自己被趕下了寶座。

Before the election many had worried about the disengagement of young people from politics. Black gave the lie to that belief. She is only 20, and immediately became the youngest MP in the House of Commons, earning the nickname “the baby of the House”.

大選之前，許多人都曾擔心年輕人與政治脫節。布萊克的存在證明這種看法是句謊言。年僅20歲的她，立刻成爲下議院最年輕的議員，並因此贏得了“議院寶寶”的綽號。

There had been a bit of toing and froing about where we might eat since — as she put it in an email — the only restaurant she had seen in London was McDonald’s. But it turns out that the tabloid coverage depicting her as a cartoon Scot existing on fast food, chips and deep-fried Mars bars is as benign as you’d expect a portrayal of the Antichrist to be: she enjoys a wide variety of food, and likes cooking. “I asked for a pasta-maker for my 15th birthday. And I used it.”

我們來往了多封電郵，才確定就餐的地點，原因正如她在一封電郵中所說，她在倫敦見過的唯一餐館就是麥當勞(McDonald's)。曾有小報的報道將布萊克描繪成一位靠快餐、薯片和油炸瑪氏(Mars)巧克力棒生活的卡通式的蘇格蘭人。事實證明，這樣的報道並不極端————就像那種說某人不信基督教的措辭一樣：她喜歡各種各樣的食物，還喜歡下廚。“我曾要求把一臺意大利麪製作機作爲我15歲生日宴會的禮物。我還用了這臺機器。”

She picked the Cinnamon Club from my list of suggestions, an upmarket Indian place in the old Westminster public library, close enough for her to be able to scurry back to the House of Commons if she needed to vote. As chance would have it, the restaurant is part of the FT Weekend Summer Menus promotion, which simplified our choice of food, offering a three-course meal for 45. “I’ll have the whole shebang, if that’s all right,” she says. I join her, and fish my recording machine out of my pocket, bought that morning from Argos. It turns out that I have, unfortunately, chucked the instructions in the bin, along with the packaging.

在我提議的餐館名單中，她選擇了肉桂俱樂部(Cinnamon Club)，這是位於威斯敏斯特舊公共圖書館的一家高檔印度餐館。對於布萊克來說，這裏的位置足夠方便，一旦她需要投票，就可以返回下議院。巧的是，這家餐廳參加了英國《金融時報》週末版夏季菜單(FT Weekend Summer Menus)的推銷活動，以45英鎊提供由三道菜組成的一餐，這也省了我們點菜的功夫。她說：“如果沒問題的話，三道菜我都要了。”我也和她一樣要了全部三道菜，接着又從我的口袋裏抽出了當天早上在Argos買的錄音機。不幸的是，我把錄音機的使用說明和其外包裝一道扔掉了。

Fortunately, as well as being the youngest MP since the Great Reform Act of 1832, Black is also a dab hand with irritating technology. I can’t make my recording machine work but she has used an identical device as a student. I am already feeling a little like an elderly uncle taking his niece out for a square meal. Now there is a serious danger of the whole lunch degenerating into absurdity. Having fixed the recording device, maybe she’ll start asking herself questions next.

然而幸運的是，布萊克不僅是1832年英國《改革法案》(Great Reform Act)誕生以來最年輕的議員，還是位時新技術的高手。我不會用我的錄音機，她學生時代卻用過同樣的錄音機。這下，我感覺自己像上了年紀的叔叔，正帶着侄女就餐。就這樣，整頓午餐出現了降級爲荒誕場景的嚴重危險。修好錄音機的她，下一步也許要開始自己問自己問題了。

I try to get on to the front foot by asking her how on earth it had all happened. “I’m still a bit stunned,” she says. Her home town of Paisley sits solidly in that less than beautiful strip of lowland Scotland where the textile mills closed long ago and one grandly titled promise of regeneration after another has fallen flat. It’s the sort of town that once had the reputation for being a place where the Labour party could stick a red rosette on the studded collar of a child-eating bull terrier and see it elected to parliament. A procession of clapped-out trade union officials and former council leaders — “low-flying jimmies”, as they were known in parliament — were regularly dispatched to Westminster, where they seemed to spend lives of harmless inactivity drinking subsidised alcohol in House of Commons bars until instructed to wobble out to vote in parliament as the party whips instructed.

我試圖把握住宴會的主動權，問她到底是怎麼當選的。她說：“我到現在還有點沒回過神來。”她的家鄉佩斯利鎮，一直坐落在算不上美麗的蘇格蘭低地地帶。在那裏，諸多紡織廠早已關閉，一個又一個帶有宏偉名稱的復興承諾已然破滅。佩斯利曾一度擁有這樣的名聲，這裏的工黨可以在一條牛頭梗鑲着飾品的項圈上掛上一個紅色玫瑰形標誌，然後坐看它被選爲議員。在這裏，一羣老朽不堪的工會官員和曾經的議會領導，會被定期派往英國議會（這些人在議會被稱爲“低調人物”）。在那裏，他們似乎會在下議院的酒吧喝着帶有補貼的酒，過着無害的無爲生活——除非是接到了指示，需要他們顫巍巍地在議會裏，按照黨鞭的指令投下自己的一票。

Yet the new MP for Paisley is not only young and female. She also represents the SNP. Black is walking proof that in contemporary politics all bets are off. In this year’s general election Labour was reduced to one seat out of the 59 in Scotland. The SNP took 56 of the others.

然而，這位新的佩斯利鎮議員不僅是一位年輕的女性，代表的還是蘇格蘭民族黨。在當代政治圈，一切都難以預料，而布萊克就是一個活生生的證明。在今年的大選中，工黨在蘇格蘭的59個議席中只拿到一個席位，而蘇格蘭民族黨則拿到其餘席位中的56個。

Not so long ago, the Labour machine might have counted on the votes of families like the Blacks — Catholic, politically engaged public-sector employees. Her parents were teachers. “We were expected to watch the news — and to comment on it,” she says. The new MP’s elder brother is a railway conductor. Some of her friends are on the dole. The SNP were known in the family as “the Scottish nose-pickers”.

就在不久前，工黨這臺機器也許還指望着來自布萊克家這類家庭的選票————這些家庭裏都是信奉天主教、積極參與政治的公共部門員工。布萊克的父母都是教師。她說：“我們預計會觀看新聞報道，並且會評論它。”這位新當選議員的哥哥是一名火車乘務員。她還有部分朋友在領取救濟金。在她家裏，蘇格蘭民族黨被稱爲“蘇格蘭挖鼻孔者（Scottish nose-pickers，其英文首字母也是SNP——譯者注）”。

But the conversion of the Black family, which took place when Mhairi was a teenager, was perhaps typical of what happened across the country. “My dad and I used to argue for hours at the dinner table,” she says. “I just couldn’t understand how anyone could continue to believe in the Union when things weren’t really changing at all.”

不過，在梅麗少女時代發生的布萊克家庭的立場轉變，也許在整個英國都十分典型。她說：“過去，我爸爸和我經常在飯桌上爭論幾個小時。我就是沒法理解，爲何在事情沒有任何改變的情況下，還有人會繼續相信英聯邦。”

When the waiter arrives with the first course — she’s having spice-encrusted Kentish lamb, I’m having Bombay-style vegetables — Black looks at the food, says, “Smashing,” and makes a point of thanking him generously.

當侍者送上第一道菜時（她點的是灑了香料的肯特郡羊腿，我點的是孟買風味的蔬菜），布萊克看着這道菜說了句：“棒極了！”並堅持要慷慨地向侍者表示謝意。

She began to go “door-chapping” (canvassing) for the nationalists long before last September’s referendum on independence, and found that vast numbers of voters had come to the same conclusion as she had. There were some holdouts, of course. “It took a long time to persuade my Auntie Jane, until I took her to a Labour for Independence meeting, and next morning she posted on Facebook that she was voting yes! I read her post in the library at university and I had to run outside because I was so excited, and you can’t make a noise in the library.”

早在去年9月的獨立公投很久以前，她就已開始爲這個民族主義政黨拉票了。在拉票的過程中，她發現大量選民已得出了和她同樣的結論。當然，也有部分人堅持不投票給他們。“我用了很長時間說服我的簡阿姨(Auntie Jane)，——直到我帶她去參加了一次支持蘇格蘭獨立的工黨人士聚會。第二天早上，她在Facebook上發了一個帖子，表示她對蘇格蘭獨立投下了支持票。我是在大學圖書館看到她的帖子的，當時我由於激動而不得不跑出圖書館————因爲圖書館裏是不許喧譁的。”

Anyone who has spent any time with London parliamentarians becomes wearily familiar with their noisy omniscience. In that sense, Black is not a parliamentarian, for the most striking thing about her is not confidence but enthusiasm. She’s young and committed, and it takes no effort at all to imagine her running out of the university library and punching the air.

任何與倫敦議員們打過不論多久交道的人，都已對他們囂張的全知全能見怪不怪了。從這個意義上說，布萊克並不是位議員，因爲她最吸引人的地方不是自信，而是熱情。她年輕而又專注，人們可以毫不費力地想象到她跑出圖書館並向空中揮手的樣子。

Yet the nationalists lost the referendum on Scottish independence after almost all the London party leaders scurried north in the last days of the campaign to spread the heebie-jeebies among voters. It worked. “It was horrible and soul-destroying, so it was. I don’t think I slept at all that night [of the referendum result]. It was horrible the next day, too. Then a couple of days later I thought, ‘I’ve not worked for two years just to see it all come to nothing’.” She went back to door-chapping.

不過，在公投宣傳戰的最後幾天裏，幾乎所有倫敦政黨領袖都急急忙忙趕到了北部的蘇格蘭，在選民中散播恐慌情緒。這種策略確實奏效了，它導致蘇格蘭民族黨在之後的蘇格蘭獨立公投中並未取勝。“那段經歷很可怕，很傷神，事情就是這樣。我想我在（公投結果出來）那天晚上根本就沒睡着。第二天感覺也很糟糕。幾天後我想：‘我幹這兩年，不是爲了眼瞅着它毫無成果’。”於是，她又再次開始拉票。

So what explains the SNP’s triumph, only a few months later, in the general election? It wasn’t an upsurge of nationalist feeling. “The SNP destroyed Labour because we were anti-austerity, whereas their message was almost the same as in the Better Together campaign.” (“Better for whom?” I have always wondered.)

那麼，在僅僅幾個月後的大選中，蘇格蘭民族黨就取得了壓倒性勝利，箇中原因是什麼呢？答案並不是民族主義情感的暴漲。“蘇格蘭民族黨會擊敗工黨，是因爲我們都反對緊縮，而工黨傳遞出的信息，則和當初發動‘在一起更好’(Better Together)宣傳攻勢的時候沒什麼不同。”（對於這個口號，我總是在考慮一個問題：“對誰更好？”）

With the arrival of the main course — we are both having chicken with mace and cardamom, with a mint chilli korma sauce — she again thanks the waiter politely and I wonder whether this sort of comfortable, expensive food is something she feels Labour MPs from lowland Scotland just got too used to. “They just seemed to be blagging it for years,” she says. For the voters, rejection of self-determination was not the same as embracing the way the Union worked in Scotland. “Supporting Labour might have made sense at the start of the welfare state but it didn’t do so any longer. By the 21st century, Labour had become intellectually bankrupt,” she says.

我倆點的主菜都是灑有肉豆蔻殼和豆蔻籽的雞肉，還澆上了薄荷味的咖喱辣椒醬。上主菜的時候，她再次禮貌地向侍者表示了感謝。當時我在想，她會不會覺得，這種口感怡人而又昂貴的食物，是那些來自蘇格蘭低地的工黨議員已司空見慣的東西。她說：“他們似乎多年來就在騙取這些。”對於選民來說，否決自決權和支持英聯邦在蘇格蘭的運作方式並不是一回事。她說：“在福利國家建立之初，支持工黨或許是有意義的，而如今卻已不再是這樣。到了21世紀，工黨在智力上已經破產。”

I suspect she intends “intellectual bankruptcy” to include moral and spiritual impoverishment, too. New Labour was always an English project, designed to make the party safe for the middle class. If anyone killed the Labour party in Scotland, I suggest, it was Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson. “New Labour meant so little,” she says.

我懷疑她那句“智力破產”的本意也包括了道德和精神上的貧窮。打造新工黨永遠是英格蘭人的任務，目的是令該黨使中產階級更有安全感。我暗示說，如果說有誰毀滅了蘇格蘭的工黨，那就是託尼布萊爾(Tony Blair)和彼得曼德爾森(Peter Mandelson)。她說：“新工黨沒什麼意義。”