An Independent London?

A hundred and seventy-seven thousand people have signed an online petition asking Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, to declare London independent from the United Kingdom and apply to join the European Union. “London is an international city, and we want to remain at the heart of Europe,” the petition’s author, a man named James O’Malley, wrote; obviously, the rest of England did not feel the same way. “Rather than passive aggressively vote against each other at every election, let’s make the divorce official and move in with our friends in Europe.” O’Malley didn’t seem to be all that serious (“Ummm, we’ll talk about the Euro later,” he wrote), but after the trauma of Brexit it was nice for cosmopolitans to have something to sign, some subsidiary act that muted the despair of the main one. “Mayor Sadiq,” O’Malley pleaded, “wouldn’t you prefer to be President Sadiq? Make it happen!”