Five years ago I wrote a piece on here about the Alternative Vote referendum - remember that? - in which I noted that since John Cleese, Joanna Lumley, Eddie Izzard, Stephen Fry, Helena Bonham Carter and Colin Firth were in favour of AV it was likely to be a bad idea. In a raft of contexts since then I've noticed that if the Luvvies are in favour of something it's likely to be wrong, and, moreover, almost certain not to prevail. You name it, from press regulation to migration, Emma Thompson will weigh in on one side and sensible people on the other.
Wealthy entertainers live in a world where reality is viewed through a distant and self-serving gauze, often from the heights of Hampstead or Primrose Hill. Out of touch? Moi? Simpson's Law has subsequently proved a helpful guide through many a complex thicket.
But what's this? An EU referendum looms. Where do the Luvvies line up? Ms Thompson helpfully gets the ball rolling. It would be "madness" for Britain to leave, she intoned at a press conference in Berlin. Britain is "a tiny little cloud-bolted, rainy corner of sort-of Europe . . . A cake-filled, misery-laden, grey old island". Notice the unattractive way self-deprecation shades into self-hatred. Notice too the utter irrelevance of our weather and home-baking habits to the In/Out argument. This air-headed nonsense is a pretty good indicator of which way the Luvvies are going to go. Where Emma leads, others will surely follow.
All well and good, but Simpson's Law now faces perhaps its sternest test. For those of us looking for a steer, what are we to make of those on the Brexit side?
Here the form looks if anything even less appealing. Douglas Carswell. Nigel Farage. George Galloway. Ian Duncan Smith. Who wants to ally themselves with such a dismal roster? Matthew Parris wrote a great piece on this in the Spectator last week in which he compared those making the case for leaving the EU with those who argued for Rhodesian UDI in the 1960s. "Their argument was shot though with anger, resentment and bitter nostalgia", Parris wrote of Ian Smith and his friends, floating the idea that to some extent the side we take in an argument is a product of our personalities. Perhaps, Parris wrote, "arguments choose their protagonists, rather than the other way round". Perhaps to yield to the Out side is to acknowledge the bitterness which lurks within us all.
Over the weekend however the Leave campaign acquired two genuine figures of substance. Michael Gove did it for reasons of principle, I think, and Boris Johnson I'm pretty sure for reasons of personal interest. After all even if Remain wins, Cameron's successor is not going to be chosen by the electorate at large but by disaffected Tories. George Osborne and Theresa May could just have handed Johnson the leadership.
Two other protagonists to weigh up. Frank Field wants us to go. I have always loved Frank Field. He wrote, "The Government has failed to secure the key renegotiation requirement, namely that we should regain control of our borders".
On the Remain side, Goldman Sachs apparently want us to stay.
That's worth a new paragraph. Yes, Goldman Sachs. And Emma Thompson.
