Emma Thompson's tirade against Britain was both nauseating and quaintly old-fashioned

Britain stinks, apparently

In the early '60s, it was fashionable for our left-dominated cultural elite to portray Britain as a failed, dull, joyless, chilly little craphole whose mean, snobbish, penny-pinching bourgeoisie was clinging pathetically to memories of past greatness and whose downtrodden working classes were too docile and stupid to vote Labour. We had Harold Macmillan, the Americans had JFK. The French treated intellectuals with respect, knew how to drink, dress and cook, were brilliant in bed, and  made great avant-garde films that suburban Brits couldn't understand. In Sweden, everything - absolutely everything - was perfect.  Any two-a-penny satirist appearing on TV or radio could be as rude as they liked about Britain, and the audience whinnied appreciatively. How brave they were, these refreshingly unpatriotic iconoclasts, how free-thinking and unhidebound.

The Beatles, Mary Quant and the Mini (skirt and car) gave everyone an excuse to be a bit patriotic in a knowing, post-modern, Union-Jack-on-a-plastic-bag, Carnaby Street sort of way. But that soon faded, and we were suddenly in the dreary, strike-bound, begging-bowl '70s, with the English Disease (strikes, stagflation) in full spate and with a growing sense that the country was now ungovernable. Anyone "backing Britain" or harking back to its former glories sounded pompous and deluded. Anti-patriotism was rife: the airwaves were crammed with celebrities whining about their sufferings at boarding school, or in the military, or at the hands of dementedly sadistic nuns etc. Anywhere else on the planet was better than this dump.

And then came Mrs. Thatcher. The Prime Minister was unashamedly proud of Britain and its past, believed in its future, and was evidently wary of foreign influences. Patriotism crept out of its hiding place and the sound of unironic national pride was once more heard in the land, and there was much rejoicing.

Meanwhile, the wankerati seethed.

My impression is that the resurgence of quiet patriotism during the 1980s has never really gone away, except among the left-liberal academic-politico-cultural elite. For instance, from what I hear, university lecturers have never really stopped poisoning the minds of their students with a constant diet of anti-British pessimism: for them, time stopped somewhere between 1962 and 1968, thus avoiding the need to face the embarrassing fact that communism has been routed and that socialism has failed disastrously wherever it has been applied (Venezuela being the latest example), and that Britain has - with one or two Labour and EU-inspired glitches along the way - done pretty well for itself. Life was so much simpler back then, when capitalism was obviously doomed and socialism was evidently about to triumph.

So when some actor, playwright, artist or academic spouts the sort of anti-British nonsense that hasn't really been fashionable for 35 years or so, you have to assume they simply don't realise how out of touch, how comically fuddy-duddy they sound. When that irritating little drip Alan Bennett last year launched his weirdly anachronistic attack on England for "excelling at hypocrisy", it struck me that I hadn't heard that sort of tosh for years: people like Bennett used to say it all the time, but it now sounds as out-of-date as complaining about Watney's Red Barrel or about how, what with all this long hair, you can't tell girls and boys apart any any more, and isn't the food in British restaurants awful etc. Does the "national treasure" only hang out with the sort of deluded old fogeys who still cling to the notion that hypocrisy is a specifically English trait?

But, while Bennett's "getting on" a bit (forgive the ironic cultural reference) and might therefore be forgiven for not noticing that attitudes have changed ever so slightly since Beyond the Fringe, Emma Thompson's only 56, and yet her attack on Britain at the Berlin Film Festival yesterday had me wondering whether she was about to tell us that Harold Wilson was the man Britain needed to drag it kicking and screaming into the white heat of the technological revolution. Apparently, Britain is "a tiny little cloud-bolted, rainy corner of sort-of Europe ... a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island."

Many years ago, this sort of rampant xenophilia would have earned wee Emma a pat on the head and a sweetie, as we all tittered at her boldness and lack of cant. I rather suspect that the response from most Britons these days would be, "Actually, I rather like my country. Go away, you silly actress." (Only the language might be a bit fruitier.) Thompson was speaking in favour of remaining in the EU, so, basically, her message was that Britain is a shitty, depressing little country which needs to be in the EU because - what? - the other countries are warmer, sunnier, more glamorous, more full of fun, and they don't eat boring old cake, and we need a bit of thir sparkle and joie de vivre to rub off on us?

But I mustn't be unfair to the treasonable twit. After all, she made some very pertinent socio-economic points, which deserve serious consideration:

'I feel European even though I live in Great Britain, and in Scotland as well.
'So 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.'

Well, of course we should be taking down borders - because, after all, what possible harm could come of doing so? I certainly can't think of any actual - or indeed potential - problems that might arise as a result of an open-borders policy. Can you? Thought not.

I suspect Stuart Jackson, the Tory MP for Peterborough, spoke for most of us when he said:

"I really couldn't give a monkeys what overpaid Leftie luvvie Emma Thompson thinks about Brexit." 

Thompson was in Berlin to promote Alone in Berlin, the latest film version of Hans Fallada's brilliant 1947 novel. Maybe she was in a bad mood because the Telegraph reviewer had said this about it:

It has a silly script, and gauche direction coming out of its ears – what’s left is a coarse, will-this-do quality which the spotlight of a competition berth has done no favours.

Let's hope those lovely, darling, adorable Europeans were nicer about it than Tim Robey, who was probably feeling miserable because he was feeling chilly and had eaten too much cake.