Emma Thompson shows how not to win the European referendum

If we want the forces of light to win the referendum on British membership of the European Union then we have to get away that it is a project of the elites.

Which may be a problem. While professionals arrange the harmonisation of qualifications across the continent to make it easy for them to take up agreeable employment abroad, the rest of us are faced with an influx of people who will work harder and expect lower wages.

That, incidentally, why it is bizarre that David Cameron's demands centre on benefits for people from Poland. It is the Poles in jobs that British workers are afraid of.

But if you are trying to dispel the idea that Europe is an elitist project then you don't want someone like Emma Thompson describing Britain as:

"a tiny little cloud-bolted, rainy corner of sort-of Europe, a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island."

It is possible to love Britain and be in favour of our membership of the EU, but you wouldn't grasp it from her words.

And I don't understand what is wrong with cake. With the success of The Great British Bake Off, it is all the rage these days and isn't a love of curry as much a marker of Britishness these days anyway?

Perhaps we should look at John Carey's The Intellectuals and the Masses, where he dissects the horror of the likes of the Bloomsbury Group at the food of the workers. My dear, tinned food!

Let me end by quoting my review of Phil Norman's A History of Television in 100 Programmes:

The essay on The Magic Roundabout called to mind the family legend that my father was a school friend of Eric Thompson. My mother says he would occasionally smile at the airs Thompson later gave himself, given the humble home he came from. Goodness knows what he made of Emma.