Petition for New Election

[DoraGray]

There is a petition on the Petition Section of the UK Government and parliament website calling for a new General Election.

These petitions can be signed by anyone and anyone with an email address and a postcode can sign it in a second and once any petition gains 100,000 signatures, Parliament has to consider debating it.

This particular petition has gained over 2 million signatures in a very short space of time and is gaining more every minute.

AIBU to think that the government should take it down or at the very least ignore it. It is an attempt by the far right to destabilise.

Do we really need another thread on this?

Plus your post sounds like a robot wrote it. We know how to start petitions and how many signatures they need to get to to get heard in the big room.

I find the current campaign by right wing groups really scary. It is relentless and started before Labour had even done anything. There is loads of misinformation and scaremongering. It is everywhere - Telegraph is as bad as daily express, mail etc. It is all over mumsnet.
I'm not sure I agree petitions should be taken down as that would justifiably lead to cries of inhibiting free speech but ignore it, yes.

I am happy to see the right wing venting their frustration by signing an online position.

It's far better than the riots during the summer.

No, the government should follow due process regardless of the contents of a petition.

We already live in a democracy so we don't need to petition for a general election. We've just had one & will automatically get another one after 5 years.
The petition won't bring about a general election. They will 'debate' it, refuse it & move on.

Not everyone is as smart as you and knows about on line petitions and I think a lot of people will be surprised-not smart arses like you of course-that a petition only needs 100,000 signatures to be considered for debate.

Gawd. Could we have a separate board for all the petition discussions? It is getting tedious.

You're saying you think the people of Mumsnet are dim?

Maybe we can start a petition for one.

It's all bots and right wing agitators, they will ignore.

Not this again

🤣

It's not dim to not know the rules around on-line petitions on the government website.
You seem to be saying it is so self-evident that any who don't know the rules around it must be dim.

It wasn't known to me and I imagine it's not known to a lot of people but this fact doesn't make us dim.

It’s not the rules that are the issue

its the fact that people (not saying you) seem to mistakenly think that if it reaches Xmillion signatories, that the thing requested will be enacted or change.

this petition is completely harmless because 7 or 8 million people can sign it, and it will then be heard in a committee for 2 mins, debated, and then quietly forgotten .
This is the key - that it’s not about signatories, or being “heard” in Parliament, it’s about these people’s perceived need for action

Thanks for explaining that @JacquesHarlow , without being insulting.

I didn't think it would have to be enacted but I did think a debate meant a full blown debate. I didn't realise that it could just be covered in a back room in two minutes! 😃 That's a relief.

I agree the vitriol against the new Labour government is staggering, OP, particularly compared to previous times.

They may or may not work out, but they were democratically elected and they deserve a chance. I write that as one who thinks they are being high handed and should consult and publicise more.

I do think special interest groups will always scream loudly enough when threatened that meaningful assessments of their claims become difficult. We are seeing that in spades now. As someone wrote on one of the farmer threads, the economy would be in much better shape if business had behaved in a more responsible manner during the long Tory years.

The predictions of doom and gloom, being unwilling to give a new government a decent chance, have ramped up since the election. It isn’t a good look.

There's also the disturbing reality that this is the beginning of what will be 20 years of disquiet, unrest, anger.

People's livelihoods are disappearing before our eyes. Blair (and I'm a Labour voter) promised a generation of teenagers that if you go to university and get an 'office job' you will better yourselves compared to the previous generation.

In reality what we're seeing is the rapid rise of AI gnawing away at earnings, at roles, at whole sectors. We see people 60+ celebrating their unearned property windfalls while failing to see the damage in the rearview mirror. We have an increased burden / need for social care, but a lack of willingness to properly address the issue and pay for it.

Society is very gently delaminating, but folk don't care enough about the structural and systemic reasons, because they just want to shout on their favourite social media platform and 'be heard'.

YABU. Being unhappy with this government does not make someone “far-right”. And the use of the term “far-right” is being bandied about far too much in my opinion. No one ever mentions the far-left do they? I think this petition has a lot of people on the left worried. I think the government will ignore it because they know that if there was another election they would lose by a huge majority and I think there needs to be a rule that if a new government goes back on its mandate and promises made which led to them, winning an election, parliament needs to be recalled and another election called. I think there will be a lot backbencher mps who are worried about losing their seats at the local elections in May. They’ve only been in power for 3 months and already it’s been awful. At least they will be voted out again in less than 5 years time.

Tbf the due process does pretty much allow them to ignore it.

They'll need to respond (but from previous petitions this can be just a couple of sentences that boil down to "no"), and then that's it.

But I agree with OP that this should be ignored. It would be a complete and utter waste of parliamentary time to pointlessly debate it.

Ahh them pesky far righters again!

Yes yes it’s all fake, remove it immediately. Everyone thinks Labour is doing a great job 🤣

Well it certainly ain't left wingers winging is it?

So it's either right wingers or external detablising organisations - probably both

They'll just ignore it, and it'll be forgotten about soon enough. No reason to bother doing any more than that and certainly nothing to worry about.

Hide the thread?

Yes, let’s just wait for the gov to brush over people’s concern with how they are running the shop. as long as the tax money keeps rolling in so they can keep on paying off all their supporters and voters - just like the last govt did.

Look at where that got the last bunch of useless idiots whose useless PPE degrees couldn’t protect the taxpayers from being shafted on their shocking PPE deals during the pandemic. 🤡

and don’t get me started on baroness booby’s antics, all that offshore crap for her direct lineal descendants.