Emma Thompson’s wrong, and not just about the EU

At first glance, Emma Thompson’s intervention in the Brexit debate earlier this week didn’t make much sense. Asked at the Berlin Film Festival whether the UK should vote to remain in the EU, she said we’d be ‘mad not to’. She went on to describe Britain as ‘a tiny little cloud-bolted, rainy corner of sort-of Europe, a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island’. She added that she ‘just felt European’ and would ‘of course’ vote to remain in the EU. ‘We should be taking down borders, not putting them up,’ she said.

I think I get the bit about Britain being ‘rainy’. That’s true, obviously, and some people dislike our islands for that reason. Not sure that is the most persuasive reason for voting ‘in’ — will it rain less if we elect to stay? — but perhaps she’s worried that it will take her longer to get to her friend George Clooney’s house on Lake Como if we leave the EU, what with the end of free movement and so on.