Most presidential residences feature a grand entrance, security guards, perhaps a few pillars. They also tend to be inside the country of which the occupant is president. Yet when I arrive at the home of Daniel Jackson, president of the Free Republic of Verdis, it is neither magnificent, nor on the Serbian-Croatian border, where his country is situated, but on a small street round the back of a bingo hall in Dover, Kent.
Jackson, 20, was born in Australia to British parents, and lived in Melbourne until he was 17. He was only 14 when he and a group of friends decided they “wanted to do something that was unique”. While most others their age were scrolling TikTok, Jackson and his friends – some from south-east Europe who he had met online, some from Waverley Christian College, the Melbourne private school he attended – scoured maps, and discovered an unclaimed strip of forest that falls outside the borders of Croatia and Serbia. They thought it would be fun to see if they could make it into a country, and named it Verdis. The “micronation” (a largely unrecognised small country, as opposed to officially recognised “microstates” such as Andorra and Monaco) is just 1.6 hectares larger than Vatican City and has never been inhabited. It has not been part of a nation since the dissolution of Yugoslavia. “Obviously that was more than 30 years ago,” says Jackson. “So we believe we’re rightful to it under international law.”
