High water marks

Empires come and go, like tides. And like tides, or indeed bathwater, they leave a line of scum and flotsam and jetsam at the high water mark.

Today will go down in history as the high water mark of the EU. And in decades to come, people will puzzle over photos of the grinning wankers and non-entities in photographs like this, in the same way as you wonder whence all the sticks, plastic bags and bottles halfway up the beach came. Or the white bits half-way up the bath, for that matter.