Some weeks before, one of the masters at the College, an unpopular Parsee, had found a Russell's viper nosing round his classroom.

The flake hinged at an inclusion in the core.

Out in the water a crash of rhinoceros-like animals browse belly deep through a bed of aquatic plants.

The fourth crisis is that the left no longer has a distinct message. This is clearly related to the fracturing of this social base. If the left no longer speaks for the workers, if equality is now considered an economically illiterate goal, then the left often finds itself putting forward a message that differs little from those of its competitors. Indeed, since the 2008 crisis, there has been a lot of ‘redwashing’ – i.e. competitors adopting policies that the left has traditionally regarded as its own. Leaders such as Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy were among the most forthright in criticizing market excesses (though their policies did not back up their rhetoric). Similarly, a number of right-wing populists have embraced socially protectionist themes (for example the British National Party’s demand for ‘British Jobs for British Workers’), and so appeal to many former social democrat voters who feel that their parties’ embrace of globalization has left them defenseless against foreign competition.