English village votes to 'secede' from U.K. over asylum centre plan

Subscribed with another email? The village's parish council announced that with 312 ballots counted, 285 had voted to secede from Britain over plans to house asylum seekers in a nearby disused military site, in a symbolic vote with no recognised legal basis. Residents were handed a ballot paper with the statement: "I support Piddington seeking to secede from the United Kingdom and pursuing self-determination." A drone view shows a former military site near Piddington, England, which has been proposed as accommodation for up to 1,250 asylum seekers | Photo Credit: Reuters The local parish council chair Tim McNally said that the village will now be known as the "principality of Piddington". "I think what this result shows is that Piddington campaigners have done an incredible job to highlight their concerns about the proposed asylum centre," the leader of Oxfordshire county council, Tim Bearder, told the BBC . The council chief warned the planned centre "will be a lightning rod to the far right, who come here to protest" and "potentially attack" asylum seekers. But Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told the BBC that a former military base "is a better option for housing asylum seekers" than hotels or rented accommodation. "We do have to house people somewhere while we get a grip on the asylum chaos and that base will go ahead," she said. Around Britain, regular protests have been staged in towns and villages against the housing of asylum seekers in hotels and other facilities. According to the government, the proposed centre would be used for a minimum of 10 years to house single adult male asylum seekers. The centre-left Labour Party, in power since July 2024, is phasing out the use of hotels as migrant accommodation, a policy it inherited from the previous Conservative government.