𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Somewhere in Oxfordshire is a tiny village of about 350 people, with no shop or school, where the government intends to foist at least 1,256 male asylum seekers on locals, housing them at a disused Ministry of Defence site half a mile down the road. That village is called Piddington, and you may have heard of it because, back in July, its residents voted overwhelmingly, by 96%, to hold a referendum on leaving the United Kingdom.

Yes, they held a vote to potentially secede from the country. Unfortunately, such ludicrous acts are what it takes to get noticed by Parliament. Andy Burnham did eventually notice, promising to look into the concerns of “the good people of Piddington” before informing the rest of us that every part of the country must “play their part” to absorb tens of thousands of asylum seekers we didn’t ask for.

Apparently, “looking into it” didn’t extend to the planning application, which was kept from public view for 56 days and finally emerged with 11 sections blacked out. Nor was there any economic or health impact assessment.

What there was, and which is still sitting on the government’s own website, is a risk assessment drawn up for housing 3,510 asylum seekers – roughly ten times the population of the village.

The Home Office says it is “categorically untrue” it plans anything of the sort, blaming outdated estimates. But as one parish councillor, Joe Marshall, put it, if this is no longer the case “then withdraw the document, and update it”.

What is truly offensive is that none of this is being decided by anybody Piddington elected. Ministers are using an urgent planning route that bypasses the local district council altogether and leaves residents’ objections non-binding. It’s almost like deja vu.

Remember last year, when the government took Epping Forest District Council to court to argue that, while you and I cannot open a casino in our living rooms without planning permission, Whitehall may ride roughshod over councils and convert hotels into boarding houses for asylum seekers? They tried to use this same Oxfordshire site back in 2003 and even then a planning inspector threw it out. So here we all are again.

As for playing our “fair part”, Cherwell District Council, under which Piddington comes, houses 80 asylum seekers today. Add 1,250 and the district would be carrying 78 for every 10,000 residents, comfortably the heaviest load in the country, when the present record holder manages 48 and the English average sits at 14.5.

Ten councils house none at all. Fairness, apparently, means crushing one Oxfordshire district while ten others contribute absolutely nothing.

Who does the Prime Minister think he is to dump thousands of undocumented men on small British towns and tell us to suck it up? This country has voted, repeatedly and unambiguously, for less of this, and every year it gets more. At what point do they start to listen?

Which brings me to the same government discovering its conscience 2,000 miles away. This week Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced sweeping sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, measures many expect will harden into something close to a full boycott.

Now to be clear, do I object to the way Israel has conducted this war? Yes. Are the settlements morally reprehensible? Also, yes. But they sit inside a far messier picture, at the centre of which is a friend and an ally.

Bilateral trade with Israel was worth £5.9billion last year. Twenty-two Israeli-linked companies are listed in London, worth £8.5billion between them.

One in eight packs of medication in Britain comes from a single Israeli pharmaceutical firm employing 1,500 people here. Thirty-eight American states have laws penalising anyone who boycotts Israel, and Washington is already muttering about retaliation.

And where is this moral clarity when it comes to Saudi Arabia, which flogs women and dismembers dissident journalists, and whose human rights record pales in comparison to Israel’s? Our sanctions will achieve nothing anyway, because goods made in the settlements will simply be relabelled as made in Israel.

But already Israel has closed our consulate in Jerusalem and shut us out of the group rebuilding Gaza, while a Labour MP has admitted the whole thing was rushed through because backbenchers were panicking about the Greens taking Holborn and St Pancras at the coming by-election.

Our politicians are in the business of buying votes, however much of the country they tear apart doing it. Britain is not a dummy to be fought over by squabbling children.

It is our home, with a rich history and cherished institutions, and our halfwit politicians would sooner bankrupt it and stoke sectarianism than preserve what generations painstakingly built.

If that is not treason, I do not know what is. Perhaps we could try listening to Piddington first?