The Sargasso. Image, http://oceanservice.noaa.gov, public domain
In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean lies the only sea on earth with no coast-line. Notable for its brown seaweed, calm blue water and as the birthplace of every eel from the wetlands of Venezuela to the fjords of Norway, the boundaries of the Sargasso Sea aren’t marked by land. Instead, its edges are defined by the great oceanic currents: the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic Current, the Canary Current and the North Atlantic Equatorial Current.
Like the Sargasso, Britain’s current crisis cannot accurately be described in terms of any one political trend. Instead, it exists at the confluence of a number of them: currents rather than static land-masses; whose boundaries are not obvious to the untrained eye, but can clearly be delineated and described by those who watch closely. And like the eels who gather there to breed, satisfactory explanations can be hard to grasp a hold of, and quickly slip out of reach.
