By most standards, Britain is a rich country. But it behaves as if it is wealthier, faster-growing and more influential than it actually is.Take chancellor Rachel Reeves’ visit to the World Bank-IMF spring meetings earlier this month. She called on other nations to follow the UK’s lead in containing energy costs and touted the country as a “safe harbour economy” to woo war-weary expats from the Gulf. The ambition was laudable, but detached from reality.
按大多数标准来看，英国是一个富裕国家。但它表现得比实际状况更富有、增长更快、影响力更大。
As she arrived in Washington, the IMF cut Britain’s growth forecasts for 2026 by more than any other G7 nation, partly because of the country’s exposure to the oil and gas shock triggered by the Iran conflict. (Britain has among the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world.) And, despite the war, hopes of a large-scale return of professionals from places such as Dubai are dim given the UK’s uncompetitive tax rates.
比如财政大臣蕾切尔•里夫斯(Rachel Reeves)本月早些时候出席世界银行(World Bank)-国际货币基金组织(IMF)春季会议的情况。她呼吁其他国家效仿英国控制能源成本，并宣传英国是“安全避风港经济体”，以吸引饱受战争之苦的驻海湾地区的外派人士。这种雄心值得称赞，但与现实脱节。
This isn’t the first time UK leaders have overstated the country’s abilities. Wherever one stands on the EU referendum, executing Brexit — the nation’s largest bureaucratic undertaking since the second world war — always seemed too big a challenge for the UK’s policymaking apparatus. And the broader notion that Britain could easily carve out winning trade deals outside the bloc overestimated the country’s economic leverage.
在她抵达华盛顿之时，IMF对英国2026年经济增长预期的下调幅度超过了七国集团(G7)中的任何其他国家，部分原因是英国在伊朗冲突引发的石油和天然气冲击中所受的影响。（英国是发达国家中工业用电价格最高的国家之一。）而且，尽管爆发了战争，但鉴于英国的税率缺乏竞争力，专业人士从迪拜等地大规模回归的希望也很渺茫。