彭定康公布了他的改革法案，以一票之差获得通过。

 

12月10日，彭定康公布了他的改革法案。

1994年2月24日，经过总督一方和鲁平及其同伙的马拉松式的游说和掰手腕，该法案在立法会仅以一票之差获得通过。

彭定康回忆说："直到我们得到它，我才知道我们真的会赢，"。

我记得我和拉文德在新界一个朋友的球场上打单打......那是一个美好的夜晚，打完后我汗流浃背地坐在草滩上，对她说："你知道我们可能要在下周这个时候离开，"因为如果我输了，那就完了。

有些人会认为这是在逃避困境，但我不认为我可以留下来。

 

On 10 December Patten published his reform bill. It was passed by just one vote in the Legislative Council on 24 February 1994 after a marathon session of lobbying and arm-twisting, both by the governor’s side and by Lu Ping and his cohorts. ‘I never knew really until we’d got it that we were going to win,’ Patten recalled. ‘I remember I’d been playing singles with Lavender on a friend’s court in the New Territories … it was a lovely evening, sitting sweatily on a grass bank just afterwards and saying to her, “You realise we may have to leave this time next week,” because if I’d lost that would have been it. Some people would have regarded it as running away from a mess, but I don’t think I could have stayed.’

 

最后一任总督将继续留任三年，直到交接。

他的成功归功于坚韧、狡猾、政治技巧和保持胆量，这些都是英国政治家的传统天赋。

但成功是在该国外交中最不寻常的事件之一之后才出现的，在这一事件中，英国的情报部门发现自己在监视他们的前主人，他的内心动荡使他的辉煌事业走向衰落。

 

The last governor would stay on for three more years until the handover. He owed his success to tenacity, guile, political skill and keeping one’s nerve, all supposedly traditional gifts of British statesmanship. But success came only after one of the most extraordinary episodes in the country’s diplomacy, in which its intelligence services found themselves spying on their former master, whose inner turmoil led a brilliant career into twilight.