A petition calling for another general election, fewer than 150 days since the polls closed, has received more than two million signatures in the UK in just two days.
It states, quite simply, “I would like there to be another general election.”
I believe the current Labour government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.
The petition has been shared by Twitter/X CEO Elon Musk, after he criticised the rise of “Orwellian” policing under prime minister Keir Starmer, as well as by leading figures from Reform UK and the Conservative Party. It comes after immense backlash to Labour’s imposition of inheritance tax on family farms, its stripping of winter fuel support payments from pensioners and its missteps on illegal migration—to name just a few recent examples of its failures.
Of course, it will surprise no one to learn that Starmer has ruled out another general election, with one Labour source fuming:
This government was elected just a few months ago with an overwhelming mandate to deliver change. The sooner those who lost accept that, the better.
In reality, Labour gained a majority of parliamentary seats, but from a low turnout and depressed popular vote, which helps to explain its rapid slump in public support.
On the right, too, commentators—such as New Culture Forum senior fellow Dr. Philip Kiszely—have described the petition as “daft,” adding that “the left pulls these kind of stunts. We don’t.” Indeed, a 2019 anti-Brexit petition picked up some six million signatures but was, as The Spectator’s Sam Leith put it, “rightly” ignored because “we don’t live in a direct democracy.”
Journalist Patrick O’Flynn, who campaigned for Brexit while a UKIP representative and is now a member of the economically left-leaning and culturally traditional Social Democratic Party, has taken a different view. He argues that the petition “does betoken something significant”—even if it won’t actually force another election. Namely it sends the message:
Millions of voters have simply had enough of the entire centre-left paradigm sustained both by Labour and the Tories in power since the turn of the century.
O’Flynn added that many of those dismissing the petition “scoffed at the very idea of Brexit, depicting it as a fringe obsession with almost zero traction until the referendum was upon us. Pay them no attention.”
The government must respond to the petition because it has received more than 10,000 signatures, and Parliament also has to consider it for a debate, given that it has passed the 100,000-name threshold. There are likely another million-or-so signatures yet to come.
