Up next in 10
Emily Maitlis joins Shelagh Fogarty to react as the sleepy village of Piddington votes to leave the UK in a symbolic referendum.
People who live there are furious and want to separate from the UK and become an independent state, after the Government announced plans to house hundreds of male asylum seekers near the town, which locals say will not be able to cope with the influx.
Some 285 villagers backed "independence", with a turnout of nearly 92%. Only 26 residents voted against the motion, with one spoiled ballot recorded.
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0:00
I mean, this is a story that's been rumbling for a while
0:02
and it could now go in all kinds of different directions, couldn't it? Yes
0:06
I mean, I think we have to slightly pull away from the hyperbole of the chair of the parish council this morning, Tim McNally
0:12
who compared it in the first sentence to the Battle of Britain and the battle for Britain
0:17
and then talked about Piddington being ground zero. I think it's slightly incumbent upon us to get back to the key thing here
0:26
which is they've just held a referendum on something that makes absolutely no difference to anything else
0:32
They voted to leave the UK and they won't leave the UK
0:38
even with their astonishingly high mandate of around 90%. So what was this really about
0:42
This was about an excellent, well-thought marketing campaign, I would suggest, that got everyone talking about Piddington
0:50
It literally put Piddington on the map and made people start talking about asylum and asylum centres
0:58
and where you would put people, of course, this goes back to the people at Piddington
1:02
350 people in Piddington saying, we don't really want 1,200 immigrant men on our doorstep
1:07
It's a big difference in numbers, isn't it? It really is. And I think if you see this as a story of scale
1:12
it is entirely understandable. You know, if you say one mile away
1:18
we're suddenly going to have like, you know, 1,200, sort of four times our village, have I got that right
1:24
You know, right on the doorstep. of course that's going to put a stress on resources and you know water and trains and buses and food
1:32
and all the rest of it i totally get that i think where it starts getting a little bit shadowy
1:37
is the the kind of stuff that is coming out from patriot platform and others sarah pochin reforms
1:45
mp in runcorn saying she has to save indigenous white women you know and this is where the language
1:51
which gets I would suggest really quite absurd which is there is no data that shows correlation between a rise in immigration rise in crime Weirdly I was just looking at some of Fraser
2:07
Nelson's data. He's very good on this stuff. And it shows the opposite. Not to say there is
2:11
definitely a correlation, but actually, as immigration has gone up at the same time, crime in this country has gone down. I'm not suggesting that is necessarily related. What
2:20
I'm trying to do is say there is nothing that actually suggests they're intertwined although
2:24
it has become something of a sort of meme of the far right and so what has happened overnight is
2:31
that Pittington has won a referendum that means absolutely nothing but they've got everyone
2:35
talking about asylum good for them great you know this is clearly a matter of concern I wonder if
2:40
you heard Lisa Nandy um I heard her on with Nick this morning yeah yeah I thought that was very
2:45
interesting because what she seemed to be saying was a lot of people are immigrants in Wigan and
2:52
people in Wigan just kind of get on with it and understand that you know at the moment until
2:56
they're until the sort of system is sorted everyone takes their share and I I took in her
3:04
tone something that suggested that you know poor people don't have the power to start running around
3:09
waving their flags holding referendums and it's your turn now it's your turn to take your share
3:14
Andy Burnham was fairly clear about that a few weeks ago, saying it's time to disperse
3:21
It has landed on the poorer communities. I mean, look, who knew? Nimbyism is about all of our backyards, right
3:27
So nobody actually likes the thing that they support when it's happening in their backyards
3:31
whether it's electricity pylons or whatever. 1,500 new people or a slaughterhouse, whatever
3:38
Of course, that is what we do. We campaign because our homes and our surroundings
3:43
are really important to us. But I'm not sure that we yet understand
3:48
through the Pittington experiment what the solution is And what Lisa Nandy and others have said is from Labour is you know we bringing the numbers down coming across We are dealing with asylum cases more quickly
4:05
We are removing people from hotels, hence the Pittington experience. It is working. You just
4:11
have to work with us and more of you have to work with us. That could be, in part, couldn't it
4:16
a success story that they have to shout about. And yet it is so shrouded in the problems that you've just outlined
4:22
that it just doesn't feel like a success story yet, does it, politically
4:26
Yeah, I mean, I think everything is a reaction and sometimes a knee-jerk reaction to the thing that went before it
4:33
So obviously, why are they in this sort of disused barracks or M.O.D. place
4:38
Well, because they were taken out of places like the hotels. Why are they taking place out of the hotels
4:44
Because there are all these protests, you know, Epping, we remember the bell in Epping you know and certainly I was talking to Luke Trill from
4:52
More In Common the pollster who said this is something that over the last year not this year
4:57
but in the previous year was coming up the whole time people hated the idea that the big central
5:02
hotel in their town that it might be the place that they've got married it might be the place
5:08
that was a really you know their sort of pride and joy of the of the square or whatever was being
5:14
used for immigrants because they just felt it was unfair so of course each of the successive
5:18
governments even though it's the Tory idea in the first place to do that sort of oh we've got to get
5:22
rid of them it's a bit it's a bit like the cat in the hat and the do you remember the bathroom where they're just trying to move it around and nobody's actually got a clue yeah whether it
5:30
solves the problem or just spends more money or makes it work and until numbers are significantly
5:34
down or asylum is given to people and then they go on to live in this country and thrive in this
5:39
country, hopefully. It's not going to go away, is it, anytime soon, this issue? I mean, the curious thing is that I think I'm already saying, like, numbers are down
5:47
Yeah. You know the small boats are down 40 Net migration is down Net migration is down considerably And so I think as ever what we trying to do is separate out what we call kind of legitimate concern
6:01
which is, do I feel that we're being over on our services, you know, the scale question
6:06
which is we haven't got enough infrastructure to provide for all these people
6:11
or is this being turned into a sort of angry mob, vigilante sort of question
6:19
which is, you know, people essentially trying to get the far right elected in whatever shape they can
6:24
And it was interesting to see in watching and listening to some of the people of Piddington
6:29
to see their different responses to people like Danny Tomo or Danny Thomas coming to the village
6:36
Some of them said, yeah, I'd have a chat with him if he came. But another woman said, I don't really want 500
6:41
The Voxbox on Newsnight last night. I don't want hundreds of people coming who just want to piggyback our village
6:48
for their own nefarious purposes. And that could get ugly. Yeah, I think there was a woman called Rachel
6:54
we were talking about this, who was really, I thought it was really interesting
6:59
She said, you know, she was married, she had mixed race kids and I think she was married to a man of Caribbean heritage
7:06
and she said it reminded her a bit of the night. Of the 80s. Yeah. of, you know, sort of the windrush and all that sort of response
7:14
Yeah, I mean, that's, I think it's been a great victory for the chair of the parish council
7:20
Wonderful referendum. You got the result you want. But what happens now
7:26
It does feel a bit like an episode of... To the Man of Ball
7:29
To the Man of Ball, which I've just re-watched. Yeah, it's the beach, it's the railways, isn't it
7:36
Yeah, we've done that. That's right. I re-watched that after Keith died
7:42
and it's just as good as ever. Good as ever, definitely. Emily, thank you
7:46
Great to have you on the programme. Emily Maitlis, co-host of Global's podcast, The News Agents, which drops at five at the usual time
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