On the wet weekend of November 23-24, 2024. a parliamentary petition demanding the government ‘Call a General Election’ really took off, and has been getting many people, especially those on the right, very excited!
The petition states: “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.”
A consequence of the last government doing away with the Fixed Term Parliament Act is that only Starmer gets to choose when we have a new election before his five years are up. How meaningful are the 2.2 million signatures, given that he is only five months into Labour’s five-year term of clearing up after the Conservatives?
A recently-created account on X has been spreading an awful lot of misinformation recently, and somehow seems to have caught the eye of X-owner, Elon Musk. Their comments about the petition got retweeted by Musk, who then proceeded to tweet about the petition three times in the space of just a few hours over the weekend. Musk has two hundred million followers all over the world.
I had a look at the data, and while it is true that the vast majority of the signatures claim to be from the UK, I was surprised to see how many people in other countries apparently have strong feelings about the current UK Labour government!
Individuals from 172 different countries had signed the petition by Monday morning (26 November), with hundreds or thousands of signatures coming from 26 countries. Amazingly, even uninhabited islands with only remote scientific outposts managed to muster up seven people who cared strongly enough to sign a petition on a Sunday afternoon!
An astonishing 1 in 150 Vatican City residents felt it was really important that Britain has another general election a mere five months after the last one. Who knew Vatican City was so plugged into UK parliamentary democracy?
From North Korea to Montserrat, Oman to Vanuatu, Western Sahara to Papua New Guinea, there are (apparently) people so passionate about the state of the British government that they sign a petition calling for another general election. Really?!
I am yet to understand what the current government has done to warrant this unprecedented demand to stand down. Did Labour cause a constitutional crisis by lying to the Queen when they prorogued parliament? Did their leader have to stand down in disgrace, foisting another two Prime Ministers on us in short order, with no return to the people to sign off on the new manifestos? Were they embroiled in corrupt contract scandals? Did they negotiate a terrible Brexit deal that impacted our economy to the tune of £100bn per year in lost output?
No, of course not. And none of the above were regarded as sufficient justification for another general election when the Tories were in power (although there’s a strong argument that they should have done).
Labour enacting policies that some people don’t like is not in any way, shape or form, a legitimate reason to demand a return to the ballot box. You’ll get to judge them on their record and vote again in four and a half years.
As for all those crowing about this petition being the fastest growing ever: it wasn’t. That accolade was won by the petition calling for golf courses to be exempt from Covid-19 closures. Nor was it the biggest: that was the 2019 petition to ‘Revoke Article 50’ (to stop the Brexit process) which garnered 6.1 million signatures. And if the instigators of the GE petition are hoping that collecting signatures means there is some major groundswell of support for their views, it seems they are likely mistaken.
Musk amplifying a petition to the far corners of the world doesn’t instil confidence that legitimate voters are signing up There are also multiple tweets exhorting people from outside the UK to sign up regardless of their nationality or electoral status, and giving a list of postcodes to use! Needless to say, the team managing the petitions are wise to any potential frauds.
As Starmer said in response to the petition, “Look, I remind myself that very many people didn’t vote Labour at the last election. I’m not surprised that many of them want a rerun.”
Just over 4 million real people voted for Reform in July 2024 and 6.8 million for the Conservatives. Of course, a lot of people are upset that they lost the election. Those on the right had got used to being the ‘winners’ and seem to think that if they don’t like the things a government does, they get to demand another go!
Even if all 2.3 million petition signatures are from real people who genuinely feel strongly about the current Labour government, so what? Labour have a democratically- elected majority of over 170 seats, and they have every right to govern until 2029.
Everyone will get their turn to vote again, when that time is up.
Editor-in-Chief: Musk’s intervention is of serious concern and appears to be an attempt to destabilise a legitimate government. We can expect to see a good deal more of this once Trump takes over the White House. Musk believes he won the election for Trump, so he no doubt now believes that he has the power to make or break governments right across the globe. To say this is alarming is an understatement.