Piddington resident Jamie Perkin has said his village feels ignored by the government over the plans for 1,250 migrants to be housed nearby.
Speaking on GB News, he said: “I voted to leave. Personally, my vote was purely just, because we as a village, we’ve campaigned. You followed us closely at GB News for the last 10 weeks. This is about making as much noise as possible.
“The government hasn’t listened to us. We went down to the village hall early to do our vote, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
“There was hundreds of people there, media everywhere, and that’s exactly what this was about. This was about trying to get as much traction as possible.
“I’m only talking for myself, but I feel that personally I’ve had enough of the government completely ignoring us. We’ve invited every MP to come and speak to us.
“We’ve had members of Reform, we’ve had Rupert Lowe come and join us this evening. We’ve had some Tories here. We’ve had the odd visit from our local MP Calum Miller. I say ‘odd’ sparingly, but yet not one single person from Labour, which is quite interesting, isn’t it?
“I did watch the clip [from Northern France] and it was an eye opener. Not that I needed my eyes open anymore, but I believe that perhaps more people, certainly in the local area, need to open their eyes a lot more because some people are ignoring the problem we’ve got at the moment.
“I think there comes a time where we need to understand that there’s a difference between people claiming asylum and seeking asylum, and people that are coming over here illegally as economic migrants, and we know that these people aren’t all coming over with the best interests at heart.
“I only took my children down [to the field] yesterday to play football and there’s going to be hundreds and hundreds of men in that field. That’s our only amenity in the village now. We’ve got no pub, we’ve got no shop, and it’s going to be a no go zone.
“There’s 320 people in our village. We’ve got 46 children. When are this government going to start listening to us? Let’s forget about the adults and what we think. When are we going to start thinking about the children? When are we going to start thinking about our own people?
“Why are asylum seekers / illegal immigrants? Why are they more important than the people of Britain that have been here that pay tax?
“I’ve said this time and time again. I feel like my personal opinion and my personal fight, I’m not just doing this for Piddington anymore, and I’ll continue to fight.
“Because I’ve seen towns, I’ve seen cities. You know, they’ve all done their fair share. And when Andy Burnham does say that, he’s got a really valid point about the fair share because villages do get away with it. They do.
“But there’s normally a reason for that. Normally, it’s behind infrastructure, right? But why don’t we stop the root cause of what’s going on in this country? Why are we going to continue to let these people in?
“Since Labour have been in government, there’s 80,000 people have come into our country illegally. 80,000. So if you’re going to bring 1200 into here, you’ve still got 79,000 people to look after.
“So they’re coming to you guys. This isn’t just Piddington. They’re coming to you. This does not stop with us.”