Passport to Piddington

On July 4, the Oxfordshire village of Piddington, population 370, voted 175-7 to hold a referendum on seceding from the United Kingdom. The Labour Party government in London plans on housing at least 1,250 single male “asylum-seekers” in a disused military camp at nearby Bicester.It sounds like a remake of the 1949 comedy Passport to Pimlico. In the movie, the delayed detonation of a World War II bomb exposes documents confirming that Pimlico, an inner-city London neighborhood near the Houses of Parliament, belongs to the dukes of Burgundy. The residents declare independence from British law, particularly postwar rationing and taxes. The state besieges them and forces their surrender. How we laughed.No one is laughing now in the self-declared Principality of Piddington. Nor in the other four rural locations that Labour has earmarked for housing more than 5,000 “asylum-seekers.” The party argues that stashing them in military camps at the taxpayer’s expense will be cheaper than the existing policy, stashing them in hotels at the taxpayer’s expense. The real aim is to place them out of the London media’s sight and mind. The migrants will be free to come and go while their appeals are processed. “We were in shock and awe when the news was announced,” said Tim McNally, who, as chairman of Piddington village council, is the closest to a prince that the principality has got. The Piddingtonians, he said, felt powerless. The idea of the Principality of Piddington was inspired by The Mouse That Roared, a 1959 English comedy in which the tiny European duchy of Grand Fenwick declares war on the United States, gets the bomb, and forces the empire to favorable trade terms. Perhaps they’ve been watching that one in Tehran.The main entrance to Paddington Train Station in London. (Getty Images) “We’re going to put Piddington on map and show people who we are,” McNally said. “People might think ‘You’re privileged,’ but we’ve worked damn hard.” Piddingtonians never wanted to fight the British state, he explained, but it is forcing them into a war of survival. “They’ve made their choice.”Choices, choices. Piddington is, or was, in the Launton and Otmoor ward of Cherwell District Council. Since the 2024 local elections, the pro-migrant Liberal Democrats have ruled the council with support from the even more pro-migrant Greens. In Launton and Otmoor, the Liberal Democrats’ candidate won 42% of the vote. Piddington is getting what it voted for, good and hard. Call him Tim McNIMBY.Nationally, Piddington is part of the Bicester and Woodstock constituency. In 2024, Calum Miller, a Liberal Democrat, won it with 38.7% of the vote. In August 2025, Miller joined local academics, faith leaders, and politicians in signing a pro-migrant appeal organized by the local charity Asylum Welcome. The appeal falsely claimed that there is “no credible evidence that asylum-seekers commit more crimes than the U.K.-born population,” endorsed their right under international conventions to claim sanctuary from the war-torn dictatorship that is France, and denounced Nigel Farage for using them as “a political football.”Now the boot is on the other foot. Miller fears for the “social cohesion” of almost entirely white Piddington. Hari Reed of Asylum Welcome warns of “friction and community tension.” Lesley McLean, the Liberal Democrat leader of Cherwell council, worries about a lack of “support, infrastructure and safeguards.” They’re right. When I reported from the migrant camp at the ex-airbase at Weatherfield, Essex, last year, residents complained of migrants leering at little girls in the village playground and peering through their kitchen windows. Property values in their postcard-perfect village had collapsed. A woman who lived by the base said she wouldn’t let her daughter out alone to walk the dog.“The question we are looking for the answer to,” Miller complained to the BBC, “is why the government thinks it is possible to put 1,250 asylum-seekers into a community when the nearest village numbers 370?”ALL’S FAIR IN LAWFAREIt’s perfectly possible, Calum. If you don’t send them back, you’ve got to put them somewhere. You support the soft-headed, soft-bordered policies that draw fraudulent and illegal immigrants to England. You support the soft landing of infinite welfare when they arrive. Your party opposes deporting them, even when they’re convicted of rape and murder. You just thought someone less nice would have to bear the consequences, and that only a racist would complain, as you now complain, that “I’ve literally no idea how the government thinks that can be absorbed into the community.”And thus it was that the Piddingtonians who voted Liberal Democrat huddled over their pints at the Spread Eagle pub and muttered, “Enoch was right.” Thus it was that McNulty rejected the legitimacy of the British state, and Miller flipped from “No human is illegal” to “Not my problem.” This is happening all over Britain, all over Europe, and all over the U.S., too. Someone should make a movie about it. But it won’t be a comedy.Dominic Green (@drdominicgreen) is a Washington Examiner columnist and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.