Andy Burnham and officials at the Home Office might find it far simpler if the crowd looked like the masked, black-clad anti-migrant protesters seen recently in Dover, Portsmouth and outside the Daily Mail’s offices.

That image would make it easier to dismiss them as Far Right agitators, cranks, or some combination of the two.

But the residents gathered here present a less convenient picture. They are wearing jumpers, gilets, jackets and jeans — unmistakably country-casual rather than confrontational.

Among them are farmers, accountants, engineers, builders, homemakers and public-sector workers. Women make up many, perhaps most, of those involved, and there is not a face covering in sight.

Nor is it easy for political strategists to brand them as stereotypical Reform or Restore supporters. At the most recent elections, the village backed a Liberal Democrat MP and elected three Lib Dem councillors, although that allegiance may not endure. There are no English or British flags fastened to Piddington’s few lampposts.

This is Piddington: an attractive Oxfordshire village with a population of 358, where residents are preparing to vote on whether to leave the United Kingdom after learning that more than 1,250 asylum seekers could be housed nearby.

The proposed residents are described as young, single and undocumented men, who would be allowed to enter and leave their accommodation at a former Ministry of Defence (MoD) facility on the village outskirts.

Piddington has no shops, cafés or obvious daytime distractions. Some asylum seekers may take the first bus to nearby Bicester — provided one arrives — but residents are asking what everyone else will do for the remainder of the day.

These are some of the many questions flying around the room this week as I drop in on a gathering which feels more like the Boston Tea Party than your ordinary parish council meeting.

For I find the village making its final plans ahead of Tuesday’s historic vote on a simple yes/no issue: Should Piddington secede from the United Kingdom and become a principality – like Monaco or Liechtenstein? 

The result will be announced, by-election style, on Wednesday morning. And I am more than happy to wager my house on the result.

Before this week’s gathering closes and people adjourn to the bar, I ask parish council chairman Tim McNally to read out the question on the ballot paper – ‘Yes or No: I support Piddington seeking to secede from the United Kingdom and pursuing self-determination’. 

I then ask those packed into the village hall (most of the electorate) to raise their hands if they intend to vote ‘Yes’. The result is a thumping Vladimir Putin/North Korea-style nem con slam dunk: 100 per cent in favour.

Nonetheless, the referendum will be held formally and correctly, under strict electoral protocols with numbered voting papers and a secret ballot. It will not be legally binding, since the Government has not authorised the vote.

One local council official has actually warned the villagers that it is illegal. So much for all that chips ‘n gravy baloney about localism and devolution from ‘King of the North’ Andy Burnham. Here in rural Oxfordshire they want their own Prince of Piddington.

It is now two months since the Daily Mail first dropped in on this saga. Back then, I likened it, half-jokingly, to the plot of the old 1949 Ealing comedy, Passport To Pimlico – in which the residents of a small London district discover an ancient treaty which means they are still part of Burgundy and, thus, not British and not subject to post-war rations and taxes.

Our Piddington story captured the imagination of the national and international media, not least because it has all the essential ingredients – picture postcard village with funny name/medieval church/rolling acres/history/colourful cross-section of articulate locals. It could easily host an episode of Midsomer Murders, a series filmed just down the road.

Yet behind the good humour and the sensible jerseys, these locals are every bit as serious and angry as those Poundland paramilitaries in their balaclavas down on the South Coast.

Back in July, neither the local MP for Bicester and Woodstock, Lib Dem Calum Miller, nor Cherwell District Council, run by the Lib Dems with Green support, wanted to talk to me about this local uprising. 

They had voiced the mandatory dismay at the lack of consultation from the Home Office, having been told out of the blue that the old MoD depot on the edge of Piddington was scheduled to become an open-door migrant centre.

However, not wanting to look in any way xenophobic, the MP then signed a letter in support of the asylum seekers while the council steered all questions to the Home Office which, in turn, said it was committed to moving small boat arrivals out of hotels.

The official response, in other words, was to write off the story as a sweet little silly season spasm of local anger and let it all blow over in a week or two.

Except, the Piddington story has not gone away. The world’s media has followed the Daily Mail down here. TV networks from America to Australia have latched on to the story. Even the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has pitched in to voice support.

Here is a Government spin doctor’s nightmare: A grass-roots movement which resolutely refuses to fall into a stereotypical subset ripe for demonisation as either ‘Far Right’ or ‘Nimby’.

You need only look at this week’s video message from the female half of the village which has already clocked up more than two million hits without even trying. It is accompanied by a letter to every female MP asking for solidarity in the face of an influx of single foreign young men with nothing to do except hang around a village.

As the 133-strong ‘Women of Piddington’ state in their appeal to the parliamentary sisterhood: ‘They would outnumber us ten to one. As fellow women, you will understand the serious risks.’

In fact, they could be outnumbered 26 to one if the Home Office opts to install 3,500 asylum seekers here, as an earlier blueprint suggested, although officials have now denied that this is the plan. 

The ‘Women of Piddington’ are not stopping there, of course. When Samantha Phillips stands up at this week’s meeting to offer a course in female self-defence, all 26 places are swiftly snapped up.

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It is just another example of how this village has found a very effective alternative to blokes in balaclavas. Piddington is now on the map with a smile rather than a scowl. It also seems to have an uncanny knack for publicity.

It was back in July that the chairman of the parish council, management consultant Tim McNally, deliberately chose July 4 for a vote on whether to stage a referendum at all. ‘The USA was celebrating 250 years of independence on the same day and we thought we’d model ourselves on them,’ he told me at the time.

A polling booth was set up at the village hall for the day – all of it monitored on CCTV – and the result was an overwhelming vote in favour of holding an independence referendum (plus one invitation to a barn dance).

The campaigners then fixed a date for that plebiscite. Next Tuesday, September 15, seemed perfect. It comes ahead of Thursday’s deadline for contributions to the ‘public consultation’ on the quadrupling of the local population. 

Everyone accepts that this process is merely a box-ticking exercise which the Government must always undertake before pressing ahead with whatever it has decided to do in the first place.

Piddington therefore picked Tuesday so that the vote can be announced before the deadline.

‘I was on TV explaining that we would be holding our vote on September 15,’ recalls Mr McNally. ‘Then the presenter said, ‘So you have chosen Battle of Britain Day’. It was only then that I realised that we really had. So we are now calling ourselves ‘Ground Zero for the Battle of Britain’.’

September 15 is, indeed, the official anniversary of the 114-day battle in 1940. The Home Office spin doctors will be displeased to hear that a supporter has offered to fly a Spitfire over Piddington next week. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It will depend on the weather,’ adds Mr McNally.

This is a slick operation in every regard. This week’s meeting includes media training. Villagers are told to expect saturation press attention and ‘to speak from the heart’ about what they want for the principality of Piddington. ‘Tax-free shopping!’ shouts one old chap at the back to gales of laughter.

Mr McNally is recruiting local children to design a new flag for an independent Piddington. This is a canny electorate. Many are boffins from the world of Formula One, given the concentration of motor racing teams in and around Oxfordshire.

Engineer James Burton has designed a very professional new Tiktok video to go with the new Piddington song – ‘It’s the Battle for Britain’ – complete with computer-generated wartime scenes and a dazzling heroine in Forties chic.

‘Everyone in this hall is of a certain age, let’s face it,’ he says. ‘We want to reach 16-24-year-olds all over the country.’

The village is scouring the Whitehall rulebook to use it against Whitehall, not least draconian bat protection legislation. 

Farmer Joy Haw-Cook, 56, has been put in charge of the bat survey and stands up to report on her findings with a local bat expert in to help. ‘One of them is incredibly rare and is on the Red List as ‘one of the rarest and most elusive mammals in the UK’. So that is really great news for us!’ She receives a hefty round of applause.

‘Call me Batwoman or ‘Old Bat’,’ she jokes. ‘I didn’t know much about bats before but I do now and you can’t disturb very rare bats until the breeding season is over. A judge could put an injunction on the site until May.’

‘People just feel the Government is not listening,’ says accountant and deputy chair of the parish council, Susannah Parden, who has been appointed returning officer for the referendum.

‘We are giving all our freedoms to people who have simply broken into the country and we feel unsafe,’ says Krissy Honour, a farmer with a 13-year-old daughter. ‘She’s got her own flock of sheep on our smallholding right next to the MoD. I won’t be letting her out to look after them if we have no idea who these men are.’

Communities in the same boat from across Britain have been in touch with the Piddington team to discuss tactics.

The campaigners here are also feeding their research and ideas into a broader protest group drawn from across the Bicester area. Called ‘Wrong Plan. Wrong Site’, it is seeking a judicial review of the Home Office’s decision.

More legalistic in tone, this has the support of the local MP. 

‘Residents across our community have worked to expose the serious flaws in the proposal to build an asylum centre at MoD Bicester,’ says Calum Miller in a written statement. 

‘My goal has been to unite the various local groups around a community-based, inclusive campaign so that our area speaks with one voice to Government in expressing our opposition. I have challenged the Prime Minister to live up to his pledge to give agency and control back to local areas.’

He declines to say how he would vote in the referendum, if he lived in Piddington.

I get no response from Cherwell Council, although Mr McNally says he received a ‘curious’ call from them. ‘We got a missed call and rang it straight back and it was the council’s electoral services department. They said they hadn’t called but then said that the referendum was against the law. We are only allowed to hold a vote on things like what colour to paint the church gates.’

Ultimately, last week’s scenes on the coast and next week’s vote in Piddington all underline the same point: No one in Britain is buying the old liberal narrative that the (ever-expanding) small boats are packed with doctors, engineers and families fleeing war and oppression. Nor do people believe that they are ‘frontline’ workers without whom the NHS will implode.

It is accepted that these are, simply, people – many from peaceful Commonwealth countries – with an unimpeachable aspiration to make a better life for themselves and also the wherewithal to pay a people smuggler £3,000 for a ride on a boat.

Once they land, they can pretend to be whatever and whoever they like and, according to a Home Office whistleblower, they will be believed. As The Times revealed this week, the number of those granted asylum who are actually in genuine need of asylum stands at just 1 per cent.

None of which is the primary concern of the ‘Women of Piddington’ whom I meet.

 What concerns them most is the fact that their future neighbours have such a limited grasp of British culture and norms that the Government now feels the need to issue them with leaflets informing them that rape is illegal.

That is why, come Wednesday morning’s referendum result, Piddington will be casting around for a prince.

Sydney is, without question, Australia’s most beautiful city — which makes this decision all the more uncomfortable. After two years on the Northern Beaches, I’m leaving.

It is not because of the Beyoncé of all harbours, the spectacular clifftops, landmark architecture or the little hidden coves scattered along the coast.

I’m going because beauty can only compensate for so much when you are trapped in horn-blaring traffic, arguing with pitbull property managers over mould, and surrendering most of your pay cheque for a shoebox apartment that turns into an air fryer during summer.

For plenty of people, Sydney’s scenery and energy make those compromises worthwhile. For me, they no longer did.

Sydney is a place where luxury-level prices often deliver very ordinary experiences. Residents are expected to tolerate unaffordable homes, relentless congestion, near-impossible parking, combative property managers and journeys that take an hour to cover only a few kilometres.

Moving here was not really my choice. My precocious teenager labelled Perth “horrifically boring” and successfully applied as an out-of-area student to a Northern Beaches public high school with a genuine “vibe”. In fairness, her NSW education has been far better than the private school in Perth that I paid through the nose to send her to.

Having lost my mum and nan a few years earlier, I also found my Perth home heavy with memories. So I thought: “f**k it, let’s move to Sydney for two years.”

Naturally, just a few months after my first attempt at Tinder — and a mild bout of limerence for a rugged rebel whose backstory was wilder than most — I fell in love. He moved to Sydney as well, although the relationship itself did not last long. 

I traded a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home on a bushy half-acre in Perth for a 59-square-metre shoebox complete with recurring mould and a remarkable ability to trap Sydney’s muggy heat. If it was 42C outside, it was 42C inside.

Perhaps living on Sydney’s so-called ‘Insular Peninsula’ Northern Beaches didn’t help. I quickly discovered people make assumptions the moment you tell them where you live.

Mention your postcode and many assume you’re an overprivileged knob with a cavoodle who never crosses the Spit Bridge and doesn’t have friends beyond your high school bubble.

This affluent corner of Sydney is known for its locals-only mentality, both onshore and offshore. North Narrabeen’s The Alley break has historically been ranked by  media as one of the most hostile environments for visiting surfers in Australia.

If you aren’t from the area or lack elite-level surfer skills, even sitting in the main lineup can quickly escalate into a verbal confrontation or see you aggressively hassled out of the water.

Surrounded by water and bottlenecked by crossings, getting anywhere can be painfully slow. Many residents rarely venture south for work or leisure, creating a self-contained bubble that can feel detached from the rest of Sydney.

And where else can you pay more than $20 for a bowl of porridge or $14 for a brownie and barely raise an eyebrow?

My first Sydney apartment also came with a property manager from an agency that claims it ‘never sleeps’, presumably because it’s busy drafting emails explaining why structural problems are actually tenant lifestyle choices.

Sydney’s rental market has long since drifted beyond affordability and, increasingly, common sense. Vacancy rates are razor-thin, competition is fierce, and landlords have little incentive to improve their properties when there are three prospective tenants waiting outside with completed applications and references in hand.

Renting here is less about finding a home and more about surrendering vast sums of money for the privilege of not being homeless.

Sydney has its charms. But the gloss starts to fade when the price of entry is a mould-flecked heat trap with no air conditioning, a landlord who treats maintenance requests as personal attacks, and a property manager who somehow manages to imply condensation is your fault for breathing.

Then, when you leave your less-than-salubrious digs, you can hop on what I consider to be a pretty decent public transport system, especially compared to Perth, which seems content to keep extending train lines further and further into the outer burbs. Shout-out to the B-Line, a rollicking bus ride into the city.

But you pay for the privilege. Sydney has the world’s second-most expensive public transport system after London, according to Deutsche Bank’s Mapping the World’s Prices report released in July. New York ranks third.

But it’s still preferable to battling Sydney’s roads.

There’s plenty to dislike about driving here. The rude, horn-happy motorists who refuse to let you merge after you’ve accidentally found yourself in the wrong lane. At one point, I considered getting a bumper sticker made that read: Be nice, I’m from Perth.

Then there are the rim-wrecking potholes, so ubiquitous they earn nicknames from locals as they destroy suspensions across Sydney’s lunar-like streetscapes, like Pittwater Road. On the Northern Beaches alone, the council repaired more than 9,000 potholes across its road network in the 12 months to June.

An honourable mention must also go to the M1, which is regularly brought to a standstill by roaming animals, crashes and breakdowns. Last year, hundreds of motorists were left stranded with flat tyres after metal debris spilled from a truck and spread across a 30km stretch of the motorway.

And after the Sydney Harbour Bridge traffic overhaul, I barely dare drive across it. If lifelong Sydneysiders say it’s confusing, I have no chance of being in the correct lane.

Closer to home, it’s maddening that a trip can take anywhere from five minutes to almost an hour depending on the time of day. Get invited to a party? Better factor in a small expedition.

Either way, driving anywhere in Sydney is a disgrace.

And while it’s hardly a reason to pack up and leave, there’s Sydney’s never-ending soundtrack. Chief among the offenders is the city’s true modern torture device: the leaf blower.

Apparently deployed whenever a single leaf dares touch the ground, it’s used not to collect debris but simply to blow it onto the road for someone else to deal with.

Across the street, the local Catholic primary school keeps the noise levels topped up, with teachers issuing half their instructions through a megaphone.

Then, before dawn breaks, the recycling scavengers come hunting for 10-cent containers, rustling through yellow-topped bins outside my bedroom window with all the subtlety of a home invasion.

Sydney boasts some of the world’s most famous landmarks, but also some of Australia’s ugliest birds.

The bin chicken needs no introduction, while the bush turkey looks perpetually unwell and mildly offended by its own existence. I’ll take Perth’s bandicoots and colourful parrots any day.

Anyway, back to where I was staying. 

In two years, I’ve endured two bathroom waterproofing renovations and the jackhammer hell that comes with them. The Airbnb below me also launched a fortnight-long renovation from hell that turned working from home into an endurance sport.

When I went a week without hot water, I was advised by my property manager to either get a gym membership or use the cold showers at the beach. 

I’ve had a homeless man sleeping in my apartment hallway during winter. I’ve sat through two nights of roadworks directly outside my apartment from 7pm to 7am, carried out overnight so beachgoers wouldn’t be inconvenienced. Righto.

My late mum’s car, which travelled the Nullarbor in near-perfect condition, has been scratched and dented trying to squeeze into parking spaces designed in the 1960s.

It’s been hit while parked on the street.

Speaking of the beach, I’ve never set foot in the water at Dee Why. A lifetime spent in Perth left me with a healthy fear of sharks, rips and dumping waves.

In hindsight, that caution may have been justified. Just months after I arrived, avid surfer Mercury Psillakis was killed in a fatal shark attack. Then came January’s unprecedented cluster of four shark attacks in 48 hours.

Add it all up and Sydney hasn’t exactly made a compelling case for itself.

But there are things I’ll miss.

My daily walks along the beach. Your world-class national parks. My trainer, Charli Downey, who is making sure my greatest fear – falling over at 70 and ending up with a broken hip in an aged care home – never becomes a reality.

I’ll miss the ocean pools, and being able to walk to the shops instead of having to jump in the car for a 15-minute trip to what I maintain is Australia’s worst IGA near my home in Perth.

So farewell, Sydney. You are, without question, one of the world’s great cities. But the price of admission, financially and emotionally, is simply too high to pay indefinitely.

I’m heading home to the Hills. Back to my veggie garden, my dogs and Sunday dinners around the table. Back to a house with room for family and friends to stay, and a life that feels a little less cramped.

Sydney has been magnificent. But home is home.

Sadiq Khan is considering a ban on log burners in parts of London as part of a fresh drive to improve the capital’s air quality.

Wood-burning stoves have become a sought-after feature in many middle-class British homes in recent years, joining Aga cookers and Smeg refrigerators as fashionable household status symbols.

However, London residents who have fitted wood stoves into their fireplaces — often spending between £2,000 and £4,000 — could be required to remove them under proposals being considered by the Mayor of London.

Lord Khan is seeking to enforce the restrictions through new zero-emission zones, with bans tailored to specific areas of the city.

The potential log burner restrictions form part of a wider package of emissions-cutting measures, which also proposes tighter limits on domestic bonfires.

Yet the mayor faces obstacles in bringing in the measures, as his existing powers do not provide a straightforward route to impose such a broad clampdown.

At present, local councils can designate smoke control areas and prohibit bonfires on council-owned land, including allotments.

Those rules generally bar the use of particular fuels, including wet wood. Homeowners can usually still burn seasoned dry logs in modern wood-burning stoves, provided the appliances comply with efficiency requirements.

Lord Khan is asking the Government to devolve additional powers to him and other local authority leaders while urging ministers to ‘go further’ in their efforts to clamp down on so-called ‘solid fuel burning’. 

He has argued that the current rules are hindering his efforts to reduce emissions while also claiming that small increases in solid-fuel burning can lead to disproportionate harm to health.   

Labour have already mulled fresh restrictions on wood-burning stoves in a bid to bring emission targets in line with the EU.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Sir James Cleverly accused Lord Khan of intruding into people’s lives.

He said: ‘Londoners need a mayor who will put policing our streets before policing our homes and gardens, prioritising getting things built over having a row with people about log burners.

‘Instead of finding new ways to tie up London and Londoners in new red tape and bans, we need to unshackle London’s potential and build a safer, cheaper, and more ambitious city we can be proud of again.’

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During his tenure as mayor, Lord Khan has focused on cutting emissions across the capital.

These include the expansion of London’s ultra-low-emission zone (ULEZ), and his backing of ‘active travel’ policies such as low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) and giving over more of the road network to cyclists. 

However, the expansion of ULEZ into areas of car-dependent outer London has angered many voters who accused Lord Khan of launching a war on motorists.

In June, the Daily Mail found that ULEZ had not improved the air quality in the Big Smoke as the Mayor had claimed.

Last year, the Mayor of London credited the £12.50-per-day ultra low emission zone with bringing levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) across the capital to within legal limits for the first time.

But analysis of official air quality figures from local authorities suggests more than half of all boroughs are still recording illegal levels of the toxic gas, which is largely emitted from diesel vehicles.

The NO2 is an annual average of 40 micrograms per cubic metre (ug/m3) of air. Last year, a report from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs claimed London fell wholly within this limit for 2024.

However, at least 18 areas of the capital are still recording annual average levels above this at individual monitoring stations.

One in the centre of Romford recorded an annualised average almost twice the limit in 2024, as did several stations in the City of London – where ULEZ was introduced seven years ago.

In June, a spokesperson for the Mayor of London said: ‘London’s ULEZ, the world’s largest clean air zone, has been a huge success in cleaning up London’s air, with harmful roadside NO2 concentrations now 24 per cent lower in outer London compared to without the ULEZ in place.

‘Air quality data from Defra shows that London met legal limits for nitrogen dioxide for the first time in 2024.

‘We know the damage that air pollution can cause to the health of Londoners so we always look at all the data available in the capital to get a clear picture of the work that still needs to be done.

‘All Londoners are now breathing much cleaner air, but there is still more to do and the Mayor will continue to take action as we build a greener, fairer London for everyone.’