Where is Piddington and what has happened?
Oxfordshire village votes 92% in favour of leaving the United Kingdom
An Oxfordshire village has voted overwhelmingly in favour of gaining independence from the United Kingdom.
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The Principality of Piddington has been declared by residents after the vote, in which 92% said that they wanted independence, with 285 voting in favour and only 26 against.
The vote was a symbolic protest against plans to house 1,256 male asylum seekers at a nearby former military base.
Parish chairman Tim McNally said this morning the vote gave “hope” to residents and described the issue as a "Battle for Britain," with housing prices dropping as a result of the asylum seeker plans.
Culture secretary Lisa Nandy told LBC: "We are getting a grip on the asylum backlog, we are processing claims faster, we're removing people who don't have the right to be here, and small boat crossings are falling.
"In the meantime, we cannot continue to ask poorer communities who've already shouldered most of the burden to continue to do that, and it is right and fair that we make sure that is distributed across the country."
Where is Piddington?
Piddington, in Oxfordshire, is about 4.5 miles (7 km) southeast of Bicester and 2.3 miles (3.7 km) from MOD Bicester, where plans call for holding 1,250 asylum seekers.
There are no amenities in Piddington, and only 350 people live there.
Villager Alice West told LBC: "It shows that as a community we’re prepared to do something extraordinary, and perhaps even a bit bonkers, to get the Government’s attention."
The Home Office has submitted an application to obtain planning permission to use the Bicester site “but it remains the case that no final decision has been taken on the site’s future use”.
What has happened?
Piddington villagers voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence from the UK, with 96% backing the motion.
Piddington's parish chairman Tim McNally said had said he was pushing for the referendum "not just for the village of Piddington, but for the rest of this country".
He compared the arrival of 1,250 people to the village to "adding 32 million people into London overnight".
Cllr McNally has also written to Andy Burnham inviting him to visit Piddington. The new Prime Minister has promised to “take power out of Westminster and carry it into every postcode".
Can a village actually leave the UK?
No, the vote is entirely symbolic, and Piddington has not actually left the United Kingdom.
Parish councils do not have the legal mechanisms to break away in such a manner and the proponents of Piddington independence know this, yet wanted publicity for their cause.
An act of Parliament would need to be granted permission for secession if a village were to leave the UK, and this is extremely unlikely to happen.
Hay-on-Wye, Powys, was declared an independent kingdom by bookseller Richard Booth in 1977, which was treated as a joke, and Forewick Holm in the Shetland Islands has had a more serious secession claim ignored by Whitehall.