Rebellion in a tiny English village reveals Burnham’s peril on migration

PIDDINGTON, England — Few would suspect this sedate village north of Oxford, population 350, is on the front line of Britain’s immigration battles. But the signs marking entry into the newly-established “principality” — fresh from a headline-grabbing vote to symbolically secede from the U.K. — tell a different story. A father and son visiting from the island of Jersey posed for pictures and brandished their passports as they crossed a white picket fence. They joked that they were immigrating here. The village’s declaration of “independence” from the rest of the U.K. came in a symbolic referendum, which took aim at the use of a military barracks on Piddington’s periphery to house up to 1,250 asylum seekers.