Interesting

November 24, 2024 Longrider General News, Political 16

While it is fascinating given the speed with which it has taken off, nothing will change.

A petition demanding a general election has smashed through the 300,000 barrier, as thousands sign it every minute.

The ‘call a general election’ petition was started four days ago, but began picking up enormous traction last night as the link began spreading on social media.

It has now hit 350,000 signatories, but is gaining hundreds ever few seconds according to the live ticker on the parliament website.

It’s now being branded Britain’s fastest ever growing petition.

Reform UK MPs are calling on voters to sign it to demonstrate their anger at Keir Starmer’s government.

As I write this, it is over 400,000. So, yes, interesting. However, in terms of numbers, it’s small. As a proportion of the electorate, it’s insignificant. A minority screaming loudly. I agree with those voices and as an exercise in protest, it’s fine. However, we aren’t due an election until 2029 and the government can easily hang on until then and will probably do so. Gordon Brown did and so did John Major despite both being highly unpopular at the time. Petitions do nothing. All this one is achieving is being something of a bellwether for public opinion. Opinion that our government despises anyway. I’ve already seen the signatories written off as Reform wingnuts. That’s what they do, write dissent off as ‘far right’ or similar, while ignoring the underlying cause. They hate us, so why would they listen?

But, yeah, interesting nonetheless.

16 Comments

  1. What’s the justification? That you disagree with the government’s policies isn’t a valid reason. Lots of people disagreed with Margaret Thatcher’s policies, it turned out that she was right. Obviously Starmer won’t turn out to be right and will do enormous harm before he is ejected but I don’t see any sound reason for another election.

    • “What’s the justification?”

      That Labour blatantly lied during the election? If you say in July ‘We have no need to raise taxes beyond those set out in the manifesto’ and then 3 months later enact one of the largest tax raising budgets there has ever been, I think people are entitled to think they’ve been literally defrauded. Its not like they’ve been in power for a few years, have tried to keep to their manifesto but events have proved too difficult to manage without breaking their election promises, its blatantly obvious they had no intention of ever keeping to what they said during the election.

      In such circumstances I think voters would be entitled to demand another vote.

    • The justification, if you can call it that is that much of what Starmer the Farmer Harmer is implementing is policies that were either unannounced in the manifesto (which said little anyway) or contrary to what was promised during the election campaign.

      As the Gordon Brown court case demonstrated, no government can be bound to manifesto promises which aren’t carried forth, so I expect Two Tier Keir’s reaction to be along the lines of “No refunds”.

  2. Signed it yesterday, not because I expect it to have an effect, just to put Starmer the Farmer Harmer under the spotlight. The more light that is shone on the slithy tove the more likely he is to get (figuratively) stabbed in the back by one or more of his ambitious fellow communists.

    Will it have any effect regarding it’s stated aim of triggering a new election? Not a bit of it. Amusement value only. Labour will hold onto power with a death grip until the end in 2029.

    • I object to your comparison of an amusing fictional depiction based on badgers with a disgusting real life lowlife. It’s unfair to fictional badgers.

      Just call him a slimy bustard, be honest. Well, maybe not bustard then. Slimy dishonest git, perhaps?

  3. It’s now at 900,000 and should be debated in parliament. More likely to cause a change of leadership rather than another election. Its amusing as lots of small things coming out that weren’t in manefestos or their election campaign.

  5. Just signed and over a million, so another 100000 in little over half an hour!

    Der Sturmer will likely not even acknowledge but I wonder what all the one term MPs will be thinking?

  6. 1,165 897 at the time of writing – I estimate currently increasing at 2,500 a minute.

    The Spouse has just pointed out that the heat map of signature rates by constituency now shows distinct isolated yellow areas where the rate is less than 0.41% – essentially ‘university towns and stabby areas’.

  7. At 1411000 when l signed – in the region of 150000/hr.
    Entertaining for sure but if it gets anywhere near labour’s GE election figure it would be hilarious

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