Why not? Let them fork, iterate and improve. They have a strong identity and economy, so they must be doing something right. Maybe being tied to a monolith even hinders their progress? (Just ideas for thought.)
Would London have been the de-facto financial hub of Europe, if people knew Brexit was coming?
IDK where are you getting this ideas but is mostly the opposite. PP is disrespectful about everything but that doesn't mean that there's no autonomy, there's a reason why every region has an "autonomous government" and are called "autonomous communities", basically because they have that autonomy.
More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_communities_of_Spai...