Residents of the Oxfordshire village, population about 350, were invited to post a slip in a box outside the village hall. The question was whether Piddington should secede from the UK. Of 312 votes, 285 said yes, 26 said no, and one person spoiled the paper, which is the most British form of diplomacy available when you can’t decide between rage and a sit-down.
The spark is a Home Office plan to house up to 1,256 male asylum seekers at nearby MoD Bicester. That’s roughly four proposed residents for every villager, or, if you prefer the official version, a site “designed to be largely self-sufficient to minimise any impact on the local community.” Which is government-speak for “please stop looking at the numbers.”
There is, of course, no legal mechanism for a parish council to leave the country. You can’t opt out of Britain the way you opt out of a gym membership, though plenty of us have tried both and still get the emails. The vote is symbolic. That hasn’t stopped a “Principality of Piddington” sign appearing on the boundary, which is how all the best micronations start: with laminated card and a very firm tone of voice.
That hasn’t stopped a “Principality of Piddington” sign appearing on the boundary, which is how all the best micronations start: with laminated card and a very firm tone of voice. If you are founding a breakaway state before tea, Amazon will sell you the laminator.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told breakfast television the government would not reconsider. Fair enough. If every village that objected to a planning decision got its own foreign office, we’d have more ambassadors than buses, and the buses still wouldn’t come.
Still, you have to admire the commitment. They’ve got a campaign song. They’ve got a pennant. They’re “the village that roars,” apparently, which is a lot to live up to when the next item on the parish agenda is probably the grit bin. Britain has always been good at this: when the official process feels deaf, we invent a smaller, louder one and give it a flag.
I don’t expect the UN to be taking calls from Piddington this afternoon. But in a week of inflation figures and “challenging” budgets, there is something very us about a village-hall box, a 92 per cent turnout, and the quiet hope that if you print the word Principality big enough, someone in Whitehall might finally look up.
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