‘Revoke Brexit’ ePetition set to beat ‘Leave’ votes at EU referendum by March 29 – IF you sign
On her way: If enough people sign this petition, it cold be the end for Theresa May.
An online petition calling on the UK government to revoke article 50 and remain in the EU is on course to be more popular than the vote to leave the EU in a 2016 referendum after it attracted more than two million signatures in 24 hours.
The petition started to gain signatures in a big way after Theresa May’s statement on Wednesday evening, in which she claimed that the people of the UK wanted her to “get on” with Brexit, stated that she was “on your side”, and tried to blame MPs for the delays that mean the UK will not leave the EU on March 29, under the miserable terms of a pathetic deal that she negotiated.
Downing Street has already stated that she believes “failing to deliver on the referendum result would be a failure of our democracy and something she couldn’t countenance”.
That means a petition with more than 17.4 million – valid – signatures will create a democratic drama for her, as failing to act on it would also be a failure of our democracy. If Theresa May decides she can countenance that, then perhaps she should retire.
The petition’s web page is currently set to update every half hour, after several resource-intensive features were disabled to stop it from crashing. The last time This Writer checked, the number of signatures was increasing by more than 100,000 on each update.
At the time of writing, it stands at more than 3,270,000.
It occurs to This Writer that the best way to get a “people’s vote” on Mrs May’s Brexit – one that she is determined to deny the electorate – is via this petition.
It is possible that people who agree with its aim may be unaware of it – or may simply feel that it won’t do any good; apathy in politics can be a brutal enemy.
If you want the will of the people to be known, I would strongly advise you to sign the petition yourself (if you haven’t already), to inform all your friends that it exists if they don’t know already, and to persuade those who do know about it but don’t think it will do any good.
Once again, you can find it here.
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If you sign? don’t you mean “IF you can sign” with the site going down every 2 mins
no chance mike of getting over 17 million signatures impossible
no chance mike of getting 17 million signatures impossible
I wonder whot those who said out will do or say start their petition up hmmm
That the democratic process to leave is being followed and a flawed petition should not be allowed to undermine democracy, perhaps.
But a flawed referendum that was subjected to criminal interference should be allowed to undermine democracy, according to your reasoning. No, thank you.
Yes, until it is declared null and void it remains the democratic vote…a petition is not.
It remains the choice of the current ruling party in the UK to say the referendum vote was fair, uncorrected and democratic but we all know that this is a lie. A petition to revoke Article 50, whose signatories outnumber those who voted to leave, would certainly challenge any validity the Leave vote has left.
It might seek to challenge but with the question of the overseas input, children still under voting age being eligible and the flawed multiple email addresss for example, how a validity claim for the petition can be upheld in comparison with one person one vote escapes me.
The concerns you raise (yet again) have been addressed. Please stop posting fairy stories.
Not a fairy story – I am affected because I am currently abroad.
That has no relevance to this matter. There are plenty of UK citizens living abroad and all may sign the petition.
Of course it is relevant – I was disenfranchised for the referendum but can use the petition – not, therefore, comparing like with like….anyway the government has seen sense and rejected the petition.
Why were you not allowed to vote in the referendum? If that happened to you, then why would you not want to sign the petition and bring the situation back to one in which another vote could happen, in which you could participate?
People who have lived overseas for fifteen years are automatically disenfranchised; signing the petition does not bring it back to one in which another vote could happen, it cancels the article and the UK remains in the EU but my point is that for disenfranchised electors the ability to sign the petition gives an advantage to the Remain Camp.
Why would UK citizens be disenfranchised at all? I don’t understand this. Can you provide proof – visual evidence?
Hope this works…it is about the “Votes for Life” or Overseas voters debate in the HOC… https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN05923 It is the bill to end the 15 year limit currently in force.
this is not a vote its one sided and means nothing. if peiple could vote both ways to vet a balanced opinion it would mean somthing. i never voted last time as i dont care what happens but id vote leave now
That’s a nonsense argument. People are perfectly at liberty not to support the petition. But if those who do support it outnumber those who voted to leave, then it will be clear that the Leave vote no longer represents a majority among the UK’s citizens. Try to deny democracy if you want, but it won’t wash.
That argument is also flawed, Mike, because:
1) not everybody, who was eligible to vote, voted.
2) Unless the figure who vote to revoke Article 50 can be shown to outnumber those who oppose it, given that there is no alternative question, one cannot possibly know if this is a majority.
3) Who is signing the petition? Are all of the signatories eligible to vote?
We have it on good authority that nobody is rigging the petition. If you don’t like that, I’m sorry but it is your problem, and yours alone.
We do not need to know how many people oppose the demands of the petition at this time. We only need to know that those supporting it outnumber those who wanted to leave in 2016. That is enough to demonstrate that any claim that there is still a democratic mandate for leaving is flawed, and that – in a sane nation, would be enough to halt the process until a more representative way forward is found.
If you are saying not everybody who was eligible to vote exercised that right in the referendum, you are correct. That does not entitle you or anybody else to permanently disenfranchise them with regard to this matter.
Of course many of the disenfranchised overseas Uk citizens were not able to vote in the referendum but can sign the petition which naturally favours the Remain Camp as those who would have voted Leave cannot register their opinion. To seek to use the petition numbers against the referendum is simply not comparing like with like; it is a distortion
No. You are suggesting that some people who live overseas were wrongly deprived of the right to vote in the referendum; if that happened, then this petition merely restores the voice they should have had in the first place.
How does a petition that seeks to revoke the article restore the voice of those overseas who wanted to leave? It doesn’t.
If everybody overseas was denied the right to vote (and that isn’t true, by the way), then revoking Article 50 puts us back in a position where they can all make their voices heard again.
That is no what I am saying, Mike. I am merely pointing out that your argument is flawed; surely you can see that. You cannot claim a majority with no way of proving it. I am not suggesting the the petition is rigged, only what we don’t know if all of the signatories are eligible to vote. One of the arguments from Remainers is that 17.4 million people is not the majority, by the same token, if the petition exceeds this figure, all that it proves is that more people will have signed the petition than voted to leave in the Referendum but it does not prove that a majority wants to remain, because we have no way of knowing how many oppose this. This is why your argument is flawed.
It is certainly the responsibility of those collecting signatures to check that they are all valid. My understanding is that this is happening and I have seen absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest otherwise. There have been wild claims about bots, foreigners signing when they have not right to do so, and multiple signings – but none of these have been proved.
Your comments about the majority may be ignored because the leave argument has always been that more people voted to leave than to remain, and not that the majority voted to do so. Switching arguments to say that the petition is invalid because it won’t represent a majority either invalidates both ‘leave’ arguments because it shows leavers will say anything that supports their ideology.
I am not supporting any leave argument, merely pointing out that yours is equally as flawed as that one that you are challenging. Note, I am not talking about whether, or not the people who sign the petition are real, multiples, or otherwise, only about whether, or not the signatories are eligible to vote; unless you can be sure they they are, it further undermines your assertion of any kind of legitimate majority. There is a difference between being eligible to sign a petition and being eligible to vote; it is the eligibility to vote that counts, in this case.
You haven’t pointed out that my argument is flawed. I don’t have to be sure the signatories are eligible for anything. The government’s ePetitions website is checked by people who are sure of that. Are you suggesting that you know better than them? That would be a mistake, I think.
Mike, read your argument, again and you will see that I am right. All that it required for one to one an eligible signatory is for one to be a U.K. citizen, or a U.K. resident. Neither of those things automatically guarantees eligibility to vote. This information is available on the petitions website. I did post it, here, somewhere. If signatories are not eligible to vote, they cannot count as part of the electorate, therefore cannot count towards any majority of which you speak. I am merely asking legitimate questions and pointing out that you are mistaken in your assertions, in this case.
I have the greatest respect for you, as a journalist, Mike but I fear that you have become blindsided, in this instance. By the way, this has nothing to do with the fact that I voted to leave, only what is presented before me.
You seem determined to deny a voice to the people whose lives will be affected by Brexit for the longest time. Why shouldn’t people who are not yet old enough to vote have a say in whether there should be a new referendum, in the knowledge of what we have discovered since the original? They still won’t be able to vote in it so they’ll still have to put their trust in those of us who can.
And my comments about eligibility to sign the petition did not refer to eligibility to vote. My point was that those who signed were eligible to do so, but you wanted to disenfranchise them of even this right.
the site is functioning well now and you should have no trouble signing. It stands at well obver 4 million signatures now . . . tell your family and tell your friends- share as widely as you can if you feel that things have gotten very silly – in a rather dark and distressing way.
Britain already voted….and it was to leave, all we have now is a bunch of panicking leftys trying laughably to stop it . Im british and have had enough of of paying millions to Europe , and open borders and no jobs or housing for british people , make the NHS and Britain great again. Im not European ,Im British.
You’re also wrong about most of your complaints.
You say “I’m not European, I’m British”. De facto you are both because Britain remains in Europe whether it leaves the European Union or not. What you are really saying is that you are a nationalist, not an internationalist, that you care for those close to you, not those far away from you.
I’ve lived in the UK all my life, but my DNA is more European than British (according to Ancestry). Have you established your ACTUAL genetic heritage? You may also find you are more European than British in your DNA.
I am “British” but not European yet I am an internationalist, because my heritage is not of Europe. How do you know that the person whom you have told is not an internationalist is, in fact, not an internationalist? There is more to the world than Europe and the E.U.
British people are Europeans whether they want to be or not; the British Isles are part of the continent of Europe.
£ike I said, I am “British,” not British. I have never described myself as European, do not identify as European and have no history with Europe.On the forms, I always tick “African.”
We voted leave does that mean if we voted a new government in we could then re vote !
Who’s “we” in that sentence? WE voted remain.
I think another vote is looking possible now – hopefully with better-defined options. The issue with the original referendum was that no effort was made to define the manner of our departure.
Ah, as we used to say “fake news “. Would have to have been biggest petition in history !.a
What’s fake about it?