New Hampshire Residents Want a Brexit-Style Secession

Photo by Samuel Tristán on Flickr/Creative Commons

If Great Britain can shrug off its ties to the European Union, surely New Hampshire can breakaway from the United States, no?

Some disgruntled Granite Staters hope to start a secession effort of their own, inspired by the “Brexit” that sent the world into shock last week, and international markets tumblings. Thirteen members of “NHexit” gathered outside Manchester’s Norris Cotton Federal Building, which founder and organizer Dave Ridley said he “would like to see turned into a shopping mall,” the Concord Monitor reports.

Ridley admits the campaign is political suicide, but that the corruptive influence that Washington has had on New Hampshire is too egregious for him to sit idly by. He says his goal is to get a state legislator to submit a simple independence bill and continue the movement.

“I’m mainly into the idea of personal independence–people taking responsibility for their communities and their own lives. And New Hampshire independence would be one way of achieving that for people,” one demonstrator from Portsmouth told the Monitor.

Why the group named itself “NHexit” when the “Hampshoo” is there for the taking, I’ll never quite understand.