The Piddington result is in. Ninety-two per cent of the voters in the tiny Oxfordshire village have voted to secede from the United Kingdom – 285 yes, 26 no. Why? Because the British government plans to dump hundreds and hundreds of small boat ‘asylum seekers’ in a military base slap bang next to the Piddingtonians.

Of course, this is a symbolic gesture. There is no legal mechanism to actually achieve secession, which is perhaps just as well. As we know, it’s hard enough to get British politicians to acknowledge the results of an official national referendum, let alone a wildcat local one.

The Piddingtonians have learnt the hard way that progressivism isn’t so peachy when you’re at the business end

Piddington is a perfect capsule illustration of what the political class has done to Britain. In fact, with its idyllic aspect and lavatorial name, it’s almost too perfect, too on-the-nose. A sitcom writer might reject the scenario as crushingly unsubtle. But real life has no such editor. We have an MP called Samantha Niblett exhorting everybody to have it off, after all.

The Piddington result contrasts with the Batman supervillain-style team-up at the weekend between separatist leaders from Wales, Scotland and Ulster, plotting to break up the UK. Everybody wants independence from Westminster, including the new Prime Minister, whose big exciting idea is to smash England into bits. It is richly ironic that these people are also the ones constantly carping about others stoking ‘division’. Personally, if my great ambition was to avoid inflaming ethnic strife, I would try to avoid housing thousands of unvetted young men around the country at taxpayers’ expense.

In response to the Piddington situation, a Home Office spokesperson loftily pronounced to the BBC, ‘The government is closing every asylum hotel, saving taxpayers over £1 billion on asylum support since the election.’ Just look at the savings, you ingrates! ‘We are working to fairly house asylum seekers across the country, moving asylum seekers into alternative accommodation, including former military sites which are designed to be self-contained to reduce impact on the local community. As part of the process, we engage with local authorities and police forces to ensure the safety and security of those in the surrounding area.’ The never-ending litany of rapes, assaults and murders perpetrated by these desperate orphans of the storm fleeing the hell that is France suggests to me that the ‘engagement’ by local authorities and police forces isn’t actually worth spit.

Note also the use of the word ‘fairly’. This is a bit like saying we must all eat our fair share of tinned beef infected with clostridium botulinum, or that our fish tanks must all take their fair share of piranhas. Here’s a thought. How about not having any of that in the first place?

I think it’s important to remember the real culprits here. The illegal immigrants are, after all, only responding to incentives. The fair-mindedness and tolerance of the British has been exploited and abused, yes. but it was the British progressive middle class – overwhelmingly white – who fashioned those incentives. It was they who took the sane and healthy idea that all ethnicities are equal and coupled it with the dangerously insane idea that all cultures are equal. My feeling is that there should be division in our society, but not between races or regions. No, the big angry divide should be between progressives and absolutely everybody else.

Amusingly. Piddington is represented by both a Lib Dem MP and a Lib Dem councillor.

The Piddingtonians have learnt the hard way that progressivism isn’t so peachy when you’re at the business end. Suddenly the Tories’ Rwanda scheme might not seem quite so gauche.

But even now, the worry of being called nasty names remains strong. Local independent councillor Tim McNally, who organised the referendum, said yesterday that the crisis was a question of ‘proportionality’, and that the problem would be the same if it were 1,200 Anglican vicars who were to be thrust on the place. How can people hear themselves coming out with such guff and not immediately shrivel up? It is a testament of sorts, I suppose, to the agreeable character of the English. But really.

As a conservative, I always enjoy seeing progressives crashing into the world as it actually is. But my pleasure is tempered by the fact that they never – or almost never – learn. That would mean admitting they were wrong, and that the dreaded Farage and gammons were right. Reform have, indeed, been all over Piddington like a rash, which is perhaps surprising considering that thrusting small boat arrivals on to progressive voters is their stated party policy.

I do feel for the Oxfordshire Lib Dem voters. But they are being punished for their own lack of imagination and empathy. They could never see this happening to them, only in the abstract to somebody else somewhere else.

Still, I wish them well in their separatist mission. But I have my own policy suggestion to end the small boat crisis. This is to process the new arrivals in the homes of MPs and civil servants. Impractical, you say? Then move the MPs and civil servants into the processing centres or HMOs. I suspect a solution to this intractable problem would very soon be found, no secessions necessary.