I see that actor and writer Emma Thompson flew to the UK from LA this week in order to lend her support to the climate change campaigners in Central London. She has “sparked fury” by flying 5,000 miles in a gas-guzzling jet in order to save the planet. Commentators like the ever-charming Toby Young find the supposed hypocrisy of such an action so incredible that they think it falls into the “you couldn’t make it up” category.

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But there are deeper complaints about celebrities voicing their opinions. Firstly, there’s the idea that they are well-paid, privileged and spoilt. Did Emma Thompson travel in First Class? is the sneering question in our minds. Privileged individuals don’t know about real people’s lives, and therefore are not to be heeded.

Second is the notion that when they go political, celebrities have gone off-piste. They are trespassers in territory they have no business exploring. Their opinions are not only no better than ours – they are (because they exploit their fame in another, non-political field) worse.

Associated with this idea of trespass is the suspicion that celebrities are not as smart as they think they are. Surrounded by sycophants, high on fame, and credited with a wisdom sometimes earned by speaking the words of scriptwriters, they believe themselves to have insights unavailable to others. (Their status may indeed afford them access to people and places you and I can’t go. They might know stuff we don’t know. But if they do, it is surely unfair that they do.)

My colleague Mark Lucas and I often get involved in bringing celebrity voices into the political sphere, either assisting them to articulate their own points of view, or asking them to articulate ours, or — inevitably — some amalgam of the two. Perhaps our most memorable effort was a recent one: Andy Serkis’s chilling Theresa May as Gollum and Smeagol from Lord of the Rings, entitled We Wants It. But we’ve been working with celebrities for years. I once brought actor Martin Freeman in to make a film supporting Labour under Ed Miliband. Martin was excellent, and brought his own values and tone to our shared endeavour. I think the film worked pretty well, not least because it riled some, and the papers went for him for a while after that. Evidence of hitting close to target. But the choicest criticism of that film came from my favourite Gogglebox star, the straight-shooting and gloriously pithy Scarlett Moffat: “I don’t need to be told how to vote by a Hobbit!”

I laughed out loud, and cherished the attention we got from one of the best shows on TV like a badge of honour.

But of course, what’s implied by that sort of comment, is that actors should act. They should speak other people’s lines; fictional lines. They should play roles. They should be our court jesters. They should take our minds off the business of the day, not remind us of it — and they certainly should not give us their unsolicited opinions on it. Instead, they should be hanging out with their luvvie friends or sleeping all day, probably with each other, or getting ‘into character’, or prancing about in tights. They should not be talking about stuff which is beyond their remit, beyond their small minds and beyond their cossetted First Class worlds. They should — let’s just say it — shut the fuck up, and fuck off back to RADA.

I understand the feeling. When I hear a celebrity, with whom I disagree, giving of his/her political opinion, I have that gut Who the fuck does he think he is? reaction. I felt it recently when a right-wing American actor, in town for a play, went out to bat a number of times for Brexit. I’ll admit, too, that this political chasm between his views and mine has coloured my opinion of his work. That actor shall remain nameless, but I’ll never enjoy his seminal performances as Frasier Crane in quite the same way again. I wonder if this is how Trump feels when he rails against Hollywood. That sense of betrayal and anger; if we don’t have shared values, then go to hell or Hollywood or Seattle, and take your arts and entertainment with you.

I suppose what matters is not so much that a famous person is endorsing or articulating a view, but whether we agree with that view. Whether or not they are articulating a good view, or at least shedding some new light on it. A famous person’s opinion is no more or less valid than anyone else’s. In the ballot box, their one vote is the same as your one vote, and mine. The point is that, in virtue of their fame, they get heard. They may have only one man’s vote, but they have more than one man’s voice. They have a megaphone.

Let’s be frank about something else too, while we’re here. There is a definite trend towards left-wing politics in arts and entertainment. Luvvies are lefties. Of course there are exceptions, and the media tends to get excited when they surface. Craig David. Sir Michael Caine. And….

Actually that’s about it, on the performer front. Of course there will be more, but I can’t think of any in the UK at least. In the US we have, of course, Arnie Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, Andy Garcia, but there, too, it is more common for this important subset of celebrities — actors — to be more left- than right-wing.

The same is probably true of creative writers. I recently met a right-wing screenwriter to discuss a project, and he himself brought it up, wanting to get it ‘out there’ in case it put me off working with him. The fact that he needed to mention it seemed to me to acknowledge the infrequency of it. Again, it would be daft to say that all screenwriters (or dramatists, novelists or poets) are left-leaning, but the tendencies are apparent. Also, for the avoidance of doubt, I am not suggesting that folk on the right are all bad people. I have Tory friends. I once had a lovely lunch with the aforementioned Andy Garcia. I confess I would probably draw the line at kissing a conservative, but you might very well find that sufficient reason to become one.

Speaking of becoming Tory, I was once reported by the Evening Standard to have been a pal of David Cameron at Oxford. (We were there at the same time, and on the same course, but at different colleges, and we never met.) Soon after that article appeared, I was invited onto Question Time. I met a producer to discuss the details and had the distinct impression that her evident disappointment in me went beyond my malodorous flirting and was in fact due to my not being a rampant Tory. I think she had hoped that she had found that elusive prize: a real-life right-winger for the Wildcard-from-the-Arts chair on Question Time. I disabused her. We agreed to postpone my appearance indefinitely. After that, right-wing screenwriter and actor Julian Fellowes — he of Downton Abbey fame — seemed to appear on Question Time quite often, and he was later made a Tory peer.

The reasons for the preponderance of left-leaning views among performers and creative writers could have to do with a developed capacity to empathise, but that speculation is for another day. For now, though, no conversation about the validity of celebrity opinion can pretend that this preponderance isn’t there.

Should celebrities be talking politics? Should we be listening? They’re spoilt, they’re cossetted, they’re overly confident, they’re uninformed, and they’re left-wing. If it still flew, they’d probably “take the Concorde” (as they used to say) to a Climate Change protest. You couldn’t make it up.

But still the answer is yes. They should be talking, and we should be listening. Because at the moment, politics is broken, and politics is toxic.

In recent months, as part of my effort to combat Brexit, I courted a number of celebrities, in the hopes of making a slew of comedy films like We Wants It. There was no money for these films — there never is — but at least if you have a script, and an actor, you have a chance of galvanising financial support. Finding an actor who agrees with the specific point you are making, and is good casting for the script you’re envisaging, and is available in a very tight window (not least because political points have a short shelf life) is spectacularly hard. But there’s another problem. Fear.

Whether they say it or not, celebrity performers are fearful. It’s a hazard of the job, at the best of times. The fear of falling on your face. Stage fright. The need to be loved. Even in the good old days before Brexit, it was something for a performer to nail her colours to the mast. In our divided society, would coming out on one side of politics or the other alienate your audience? Nowadays, we can safely bet that the companies quitting the UK who say it was “not a Brexit-related decision” are saying that because they do not wish to lose any sales to Brexit voters. Having made the decision to close its factory, why would Honda risk the sale of a single car to a Brexit voter by issuing a sour statement?

As part of this anti-Brexit effort, I wrote two scripts for a comedy performer. In one, she was to play Jeremy Corbyn as one of her much-loved characters, assuring centrist Labour MPs that he would absolutely, definitely honour the Conference motion to pursue a referendum, before berating them hilariously once they had left. (This was before the Independent Group was formed.) In the second script, she was to play Theresa May in the guise of another of her famous characters, refusing to listen to complaints that she was serving up the same busted flush of a deal over and over again.

The performer’s existing characters, she was at pains to point out, were not political. This would be a departure for her, and — much as she feared the division and hate which she and I agreed was being stirred up by Brexit — would using her characters in this way alienate her loyal audience?

There was no doubt in my mind that it would, and I said so, but it seemed to me that there is no point in having an audience if you can’t have them hear something you want them to hear; that the alienation might not be as severe as expected, especially if our work was funny and was justified by that all-essential nugget of truth; and that even if there were a horrible backlash — even if we failed entirely — we still had to try.

Because, I argued, each of us has not just a right, but a duty to stand up for what we believe in, and that duty is magnified when we perceive our country to be at risk, when we believe the vulnerable will suffer disproportionately, when we see racism on the rise, hate crime on the rise, fascism on the rise. If those aren’t reasons to stand up and be counted, then I don’t know what counts as a reason. What else could it possibly take?

There comes a time, and this is it. Those gifted with a megaphone instead of a mere voice need to use it. If they lose some audience goodwill, so be it. If they lose currency (literally or otherwise) so be it. If, like me, you fall out of love with a cherished performer because he spoke up for a view you don’t like, then so be it. We are not selling cars in a foreign country. We are defending values in our own. We are setting the framework, economically and socially, for our future and for our children’s future. We are making decisions which affect us profoundly, and which affect our neighbours profoundly – not just the Irish, but the EU27, and, indeed, beyond. This stuff matters. There is not much that matters more.

I lost that argument. The performer — who really shall remain nameless — didn’t make those films with me. There were others, too, who preferred to keep their powder dry with the public. I totally get it. In difficult times, you may choose to watch out for your own security, your income, your clean name. If you can’t change the world, then at least protect your own. For every Andy Serkis or Martin Freeman, there are many who choose to remain silent. That is every individual’s right.

But boy, do I wish there were more celebrities piping up. Six million people (what an evocative number) signed the petition to Revoke Article 50 and bin Brexit. Surveys consistently show a majority of people would Remain, given the chance. But how often do we hear anyone in public life talking about straight Remain? Almost never. At best they will talk about putting it back to the people. But never do they say, “Let’s just admit defeat on this and move on.” Politics is broken. Politicians cannot say what they know a majority wants. They cannot even speak the words. That’s how toxic it has become. That’s why more voices, brave voices, startling voices, memorable voices, should be piping up. And it’s why they are so shy to do so.

And it’s why, when I see someone like Emma Thompson, a national treasure, a straight-talker, a woman of no nonsense, getting on a plane and showing up to give some weight to an issue that really fucking matters, I for one will sit up and say, “Good afternoon, Seattle. I’m listening.”