Let Piddington Go

I wrote a while ago that the logic of nationalism leads to a break-up of the nation state.  In the last few days that has been born out.

On the one hand, we have the nationalists in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, demanding that the British nation state be broken up, reversing the main progressive development of the 18th/19th century, largely now driven by the reality imposed by the reactionary English nationalism that led to Brexit.  In England itself, that same failure of Brexit leads to a similar drive towards regionalism, provincialism and parochialism, as seen in the attempts to create regional and metropolitan fiefdoms in the guise of elected mayors.

The ultimate idiocy of that has now come in the form of the referendum in Piddington, again driven by the inevitable failure of Brexit to "bring back control", leading the reactionary bigots, and racists to put forward such a solution rather than have refugees housed in their midst.  The well-healed of the area, of course take the same attitude to many other issues, wanting all the benefits of their rural idylls, without any of the attendant infrastructure.

Well, we should let them go, as they claim to want.  The sooner the better.  Let them then have to pay for their own infrastructure, energy supplies, water supplies, waste services, NHS and so on.  And, of course, they would have no rights to employment outside their borders, or even right to cross that border.  Brexit proved a disaster within weeks, and continues to be so.  The proponents of a Passport to Piddington, would not even get that project off the ground.