My Kingdom for a horse's arse...

I don’t care if you don’t like what I say; you don’t know me and you can always just ignore me. But I always write from a position of having an at least partially informed view, tempered by a long-held distrust of human motives. I‘m not an entirely objective observer (who among us really is?) but while I may employ it, I rarely let sentiment inform my account of the nefarious goings-on in our little corner of the universe. I’m not sure much of that can be said for the likes of Emma Thompson.

On matters of race, gender, social justice, immigration, welfare, the NHS and politics in general the luvvies speak with but one voice, or do not speak at all. You rarely hear right-wing voices from the world of entertainment because, well, look what happens to them. And the last time you were allowed to be exposed to the views of soft-right patriotic entertainers like Jim Davidson was, ooh, well, it was a way back. Jeremy Clarkson, of course, had a large audience and undeniably right-of-centre views and it was hilarious when he punched Oisin Tymon suggested on The One Show that striking public sector workers should be taken out and shot... in front of their families.

But oh, what a fuss was made – in some quarters it was said that was the moment at which Danny Cohen set in train his plot to oust the ‘hateful’ yet tremendously popular presenter, who dared to say what you can hear down any pub on any given night of the week. And indeed in any workplace where people still toil for an honest wage. For, despite the impression the media desperately wish to portray, not everybody is in thrall to a form of socialism that only rich people can afford to circumvent. The rest of us are involved, either paying for it by working all hours, or sucking it dry... by not.

It is no good poor little privileged people who play dressing up and pretend for a living imagining themselves in the role of statesman. Flitting from one part to the next, it is a recognised phenomenon that some actors get so lost in their little filmic worlds they scarcely remember their own names, let alone command any understanding of realpolitik. La Thompson said of Britain that it was “a tiny little cloud-bolted, rainy corner of sort-of Europe ... a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island.” And went on to add, “Of course I'm going to vote to stay in Europe. Are you kidding? Oh my God, of course. It would be madness not to. It's a crazy idea not to. We should be taking down borders, not putting them up." Did you get that? She wants to tear down what's left of the borders.

I just say what the bloody old bird tells me...

The day before, lest ye forget, she wanted to kill off all the ‘old white men’ who had dared to award Baftas on merit, rather than on the basis of some form of colour code. So you would hope that your man-in-the-street would ignore such ideological pronouncements. But in the absence of any avowedly Eurosceptic Conservative big beasts coming out for Brexit, it has to be a worry that public opinion may be swayed, at least a tiny bit, by the vacuous utterings of those who spend most of their lives developing imaginary personas and living in an alternative reality.