United Kingdom: Parliamentary petition exceeds 2 million signatures for a new election
The signatures in favor were collected in less than 48 hours, and Parliament's rules of procedure require the House of Commons to hold a vote if more than 100,000 signatures are exceeded.
File image of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer
A petition conducted through the British Parliament's website has collected more than 2 million signatures in less than 48 hours calling for a new election. This online petition, which must pass through the House of Commons due to the number of signatures, has attracted the attention of international and U.K. celebrities.
The collection of signatures, initiated by Michael Westwood, has the goal of "calling a general election" because "the current Labour government has reneged on the promises it made in the run-up to the last election." According to the firm's open data, in some constituencies in southern England, more than 6% of residents have signed in favor.
It is the most signed petition in Parliament since British citizens called for repeal of Article 50. At that time, more than 6 million signatures were obtained via the same system.
The United Kingdom went to the polls early to elect a new government and a new House of Commons after 14 years of Conservative rule. After the polls, Labour, led by Keir Starmer, won and took a strong majority of 402 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons.
However, the popular vote was extremely low for Labour, garnering just 35% of the total vote. This is the lowest result for a party in government since 1945 in the United Kingdom. With a turnout 8 points lower than in 2019, Labour even scored worse in the popular vote than that year, when it managed 600,000 more votes despite losing the election.
However, the British “first-past-the-post” system means that whoever wins in each district is the one who takes the seat. Since this summer's election, despite Labour and British progressives claiming a landslide victory, it was known that governing and maintaining acceptable popularity would be a difficult task for Starmer.
The petition will go to a vote
This means that within a period of time, Parliament could vote on a general election. This petition is the only one to pass the 100,000-vote threshold, along with another asking to consider that only those over the age of 16 should be allowed to have social networking accounts.
The petition will not prosper in the House of Commons, however, due to the strong majority held by Labour. Prime Minister Keir Starmer commented this afternoon that he is not surprised by the success of the petition, as picked up by the BBC.
"I remind myself that a lot of people didn't vote Labour in the last election," Starmer said in a televised interview Monday. "I'm not surprised that many of them want a rerun. Our system doesn't work that way."
Veracity of signatures
However, many more come from all over the world, including Afghanistan, for example. They are a tiny minority, as at 12 p.m. (EST) 2,274,791 of 2,292,136 signatures were made from digital devices located in the U.K.
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