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.

I think this petition has a lot of people on the left worried

Why? It appears to have got most of its signatures when the U.K. was in bed. And even if they were all legitimate signatures which they aren’t, people already know that people exist who didn’t want Labour to win.

If it reaches 100,000 signatures it has to be considered for debate. It doesn't have to be debated - often they're turned down.

And if it is debated, it is never debated in what people generally think of as 'Parliament'. It's not a Commons debate with a bill and a vote; it's a debate in Westminster Hall (if sufficient interest) or one of the smaller rooms. And the vote at the end is not 'Aye' or 'No' to the motion, it's simply a vote agreeing that the topic has been debated.

I would say I’m bewildered by the amount of attention the existence this petition is getting but I suspect I do know why it’s happening unfortunately.

The petition is meaningless. Most of the signatures are invalid, it’s borderline whether it’s actually acceptable given that the calling of an election is a royal prerogative rather than anything Parliament or the government can do, and in any case, surely it’s not news that 2 million people (or more) don’t like the result of the recent election? And yes, even if the Petitions Committee recommend it for debate, it’s no more than an adjournment debate on a random subject.

No MPs will lose their seats in a local election by the way, backbench or not. Only councillors stand in local elections.

You could just scroll on by...

Um most of the signatures? Even starmer isn’t saying that, and I’m astounded you love Labour more than he does. 😂 and of course it’s acceptable. Free speech is a thing. People are allowed to petitton. No one called an election.simply requested one.

oh dear.

There's a fair bit of this on here but really polls back up that Labour are not doing well.

Correction: a lot of people think Labour are not doing well.

Whether they're doing a good job or not is a question that can only be answered in a few years' time - possibly not even until half way through the next term (whoever wins next time).

Ultimately, this petition just makes me chuckle. The folk I've seen screaming from the rooftops about how it needs to be signed to get Labour out of government are the exact same people who saw the petition to re-run the Brexit referendum after it was clear the government was screwing the pooch on it, and responded with "You lost, get over it, petitions mean nothing".

Whether they're doing a good job or not is a question that can only be answered in a few years' time

Not really. Which is why polls are taken to show public sentiment

These mn threads and posts don't reflect the results

Whereas the Tories had no scrutiny for over a decade until the Truss debacle. They spent the 2010s blaming Labour for everything.

They won't be allowed to govern much longer.

They only have to consider it. Most petitions that get over the threshold are considered and rejected for debate.

This one is so obviously being gamed, and is so obviously irrelevant, that it will be ignored and passed over for debate. As it should be.

It's just a bunch of bad loser Reform shills crying online.

People want a government that govern in the interests of the British people and feel this is not what they have. It's perfectly legitimate to start a petition

No, people have the right to use legal means to show their displeasure with this government. It won’t make a difference, they have a 5 year mandate. Closing it down will only cause more aggro.

That's very useful information, Thank you

That's only true if you assume that the public are the best arbiters of whether a good job is being done; history and logic strongly suggest that's not the case.

Polls, as you say, only show public sentiment, ie whether people like what the government are doing, which is absolutely nothing to do with whether they're actually doing a good job.

That's only true if you assume that the public are the best arbiters of whether a good job is being done; history and logic strongly suggest that's not the case.

The public are the voters so unless you have another selection process what they think determines who is in power.

That's democracy, who or what else would you do to decide?

Not another petition thread...how many of these do we need to have?
I'll say what I've said before - no, I won't be signing a petition and even if we had another general election (which is highly unlikely at this point, no matter how many petitions they raise) I think I shall 'actively' refuse to vote. I didn't vote this government in but I don't have a major issue with them so far and I'd like to give them a chance.

Are you deliberately missing the point?

The point I'm making is this: whether the government are doing the right thing or a good job has nothing to do with public sentiment, which is why the petition (along with any polls run by anybody right now) is completely irrelevant and signifies nothing of importance.

These petitions are a pretty pointless gimmick and I would be up for scrapping the whole system. But singling this one out for removal would be more destabilising than letting it run.

If it's any consolation, petitions are basically ignored anyway. Government responses are mostly just copy and paste jobs by a mid range official and no Westminster Hall debate has ever achieved anything - it's where issues nobody takes seriously are discussed.

Acceptable under the rules of the parliamentary petition system, not morally acceptable. A petition is only valid if it petitions for something that Parliament or the government can do. Given that calling an election is in the power of neither, this petition can achieve nothing at all, regardless of the fact that a petition debate is toothless.

Um most of the signatures? Even starmer isn’t saying that, and I’m astounded you love Labour more than he does

This sounds very childish.

Petitions as they have always been, before the Petitions Committee was established, could be a valuable way of engaging attention on a local issue. Unlikely that the Government response would be a radical change in policy, but they could energise local politicians and also enable national campaigns to have a coordinated voice. I would hope they still operate like that. They were never however an instrument for changing the way the country is run.

@ntmdino I think Labour and you are missing that you are not well liked and 70% thinking we're doing worse is bad no matter how you try to spin it.

Plus I was talking about mn not reflecting that sentiment. Only 8% say they're doing better and if you're in that group as a fair few on here seem to be it's a minority opinion.

Having done some looking up, I see a petition for a general election was debated last year, so there is a precedent clearly for this being accepted. But it’ll be happening on the basis of political judgement I imagine - quite rightly.

Personally, not that it matters, I voted Labour and I don’t think they’ve got off to a good start. But they are three months in and things were in crisis when they took over and I don’t want to live in a country that changes leadership every few months in a desperate attempt to find some magic answer. Political parties that promise to make everything better overnight in the current climate are talking nonsense. I want to give the government time to work this out. We’ve suffered enough from the policy stasis caused by so many changes of leader and ministers over the eight years. When the next general election happens I’ll judge them then on what they’ve achieved in 4/5 years.

A lot of the petition signatures are fake from foreign countries. https://www.itv.com/news/2024-11-25/thats-not-how-it-works-pm-responds-to-election-petition-with-fake-signatures
Right whingers need to accept they lost instead of trying to overturn the election. Boris Johnson lied every time he opened his mouth.

Why am I not well-liked? What, exactly, have I done to you or the population?

You're now spectactularly missing the point, though. Here, let me spell it out for you...

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Say there's a company, Acme Inc. Acme Inc is run by a CEO, Bob. The economy has shifted, and the company needs to make some tough financial decisions to survive. As a result, he gets rid of all the free lunches and loot cupboards, and cancels the Christmas party and bonuses this year, but he also puts in a plan that's 90% likely to double the bonuses next year (but he can't promise it, because it's not 100%).

Because of this Bob has avoided a round of redundancies.

Nobody in their right mind, with full understand and knowledge of the situation, would get rid of Bob. Bob is not popular among the employees, though, because they don't understand what's involved with running a company - all they understand is that they're not getting free lunches and extra money this year.

Bob's done the right thing, having saved the company and everyone's jobs, but now everyone's calling him an asshole. They might even start a petition about getting rid of him. However, that sentiment is irrelevant because their jobs - which they all assumed are assured no matter what, being self-involved employees - have actually been saved, and they'll all probably be better off next year.

tl;dr - the employees' opinions don't matter, because they don't understand anything that's happening and don't have access to all the information.
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Is a lightbulb coming on yet?

"Right whingers need to accept they lost instead of trying to overturn the election. Boris Johnson lied every time he opened his mouth."

Also left wingers need to realise that a majority of the people who sign know full well it would never lead to a new vote, they are just making a statement. Funny how those on the left keep calling them thick, but things like this go straight over their head.🙄