Welcome to the World of Nations: The Principality of Piddington

The world of nations may well have an addition: The Principality of Piddington. 

Piddington is a tiny English village that may well have come out of a history book. It has a population of about 350 people, many of whose families have been in the village for generations, living without incident in this tiny village in Oxfordshire, northwest of London. But now, the UK government proposes to house 1,200 "asylum seekers" in a military base near the village, and the villagers just aren't having it. They have now voted overwhelmingly to secede from the United Kingdom, but, as is so often the case, there's a catch.

A tiny English village has voted to leave the United Kingdom as a symbolic protest against government plans to house up to 1,200 asylum seekers on a nearby military base.

Residents of Piddington, which has a population of about 350, voted overwhelmingly for secession in the non-binding referendum. The results announced on Wednesday showed 285 votes in favor of breaking away, with 26 villagers voting against.

Trouble is, it's a purely symbolic vote. A landlocked principality like this, surrounded by another country, just isn't tenable, and this vote, while telling of the mood of the villagers, was just a non-binding referendum; a protest vote, if you like. But they consider the message sent.

“We have given an absolute message, not just to the region, not just to the country, but to the world,” said the parish chairman, Tim McNally. He said the district will henceforth be known as “the Principality of Piddington.”

The attention-grabbing vote was called to oppose plans to turn the former Ministry of Defense Bicester base — which is about half a mile (0.8 kilometers) from the village — into housing for male migrants. The government says the site is “designed to be largely self‑sufficient to minimize any impact on the local community.”

Oh, the impact won't be minimized. Unless the "asylum seekers" are locked up, they'll be wandering around, and it's a safe bet their interactions with the locals won't involve the classic British reserve and courtesy. These are people, almost certainly, from low-trust, Third World societies, and they will comport themselves as such. 

Some of the villagers are worried about the big picture.

Some backers of the Piddington referendum compared their fight against the asylum accommodation to the 1940 Battle of Britain against Nazi Germany.

Villager Herbert Owen, 76, said after voting on Tuesday that the independence referendum “isn’t just about Piddington,” adding: “It means everything our grandparents, our parents fought for. Today is the Battle of Britain.”

That may not be as much of an exaggeration as one might think.

The current Labour government, like American Democrats, seems to think that their home country has some moral obligation to take in every illegal immigrant from every Third World craphole on the planet, so long as they show up muttering something about seeking asylum. Then they are fed, housed, and receive medical treatment at the expense of the taxpayers. The people of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland are, increasingly, demanding to know why. 

It's a good question. Most of the nations of the West can't afford to be a refuge for every "asylum seeker," the overwhelming majority of whom seem to be young, unattached, healthy men of military age. 

The people of Piddington have spoken. They won't be the last. 

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