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 don't know why people are overly concerned about it. Petitions don't mean anything to politicians and they'll ignore it, we had one in Wales for the speed limit changes and it was completely bypassed. Seems like it's living in labour supporters heads rent free right now though because they are the ones that keep starting endless threads about it.

Is that the MP who assaulted another man?

Growth has stagnated since half way though the year and the PMI report shows the private sector contracting even when forecasts didn't show that. They are moving the needle just not in the right direction.

They will need to fix both those self created outcomes to deal with the next few years. £70bn tax and borrowing in a budget isn't doable each year.

Tbh I don't think it is Labour supporters in the main who keep starting threads on this.

@PandoraSox I've seen one started by someone encouraging people to sign it but the rest are clearly started by labour voters. It's never going to be taken seriously so I don't know why people are worried.

I think there are also a lot of disillusioned labour voters signing the petition. Pensioners, students, farmers etc who thought they'd vote for Labour but now regret it. I think most Tory voters expected Labour would go back on what they said in the run up to the election eg. Labour MP's Speaking at the farmers conference stating categorically inheritance tax was not on the table only a couple of months before the election.

Nobody is saying being unhappy with this government makes you far right.

What they are saying is this petition is being pushed by the far right. That’s a big difference.

The needles have barely shifted at all, so it's difficult to determine whether the effect is an immediate response to the budget and actions to date, or something already in the system working its way through.

You have to look back to Truss to see a meaningful swing in the dial as an immediate result of a single set of decisions.

My point was, out of a whole nation, 2 million signing a petition is pitiful and doesn't evidence the concerns about Labour that are being banded about.

Nearly 29 million people voted in the 2024 election (28,809,340).
6.9% have signed the petition. Hardly newsworthy or of any consequence.

'Something already in the system' no, it's easy to follow the economic indicators from the CCI to the PMI and growth figures

Whether they can deal with that we'll see but since Reeves has ruled out the same tax and borrowing next year they'll need to get the growth back

It's never happened before after a GE.

your ‘points’ in order:
The People writing and promoting this are indeed far right. It’s not about disagreement.
No one ever mentions the far left? Are you new here?
The government won’t ignore it because they think they would lose an election, they’ll ignore it because it’s mad and not how democracy in this country works.
MPs can’t lose their seats in local elections.
It hasn’t been awful. Some voices have told you it has, but it hasn’t. It hasn’t been perfect, but lots of good stuff has been done whether you are aware of it or not.
There will be an election in 5 years, yes. I wouldn’t judge what’ll happen yet. A week is a long time in politics. 4.5 years would need a crystal ball.

What’s staggering is how many of the right are completely clueless about how the world works if it doesn’t suit them. Most of their arguments are illogical and double standards. The reform/ Brexit/ Farage/ Tommy Robinson misinformation that people believe is laughable. All over SM.

Wanting a petition that completely defies democracy that they shout about the importance of when it suits them.

Thinking that Donald Trump will oust Kier Starmer using special powers that allow him to interfere in another country’s politics when they apparently didn’t want to be ruled by outside influences so voted Brexit.

Saying Labour lied about their promises but completely ignoring the fact that their messiah Farage sold them Brexit based on lies.

Now they are too stupid and ignorant to realise this petition will make no difference because Labour have a massive majority and anyone can sign using any email address, the same person can sign multiple times using disposable addresses and it’s not verified, yet they are wetting themselves with excitement.

We have entered times when logic, reasoning and intelligence no longer matter. Misinformation spreads like wildfire and people just adopt opinions as readily as they change their clothes in the morning, simply because they want to. Fuck the truth or discerning the proper facts and nuances of any situation. It’s what they believe, it must be true.

Most of these people can barely string a coherent sentence together, for Christ’s sake.

Thinking that Donald Trump will oust Kier Starmer using special powers that allow him to interfere in another country’s politics when they apparently didn’t want to be ruled by outside influences so voted Brexit.

Even if he could, Trump's going to be far too busy dealing with his electorate realising exactly what they voted for. There's already a lot of, "But I didn't mean me", floating around the MAGA socials.

E-Petitions have only existed since 2015.

Petitions are always part of our democracy. We have a system to enable them and a process when they go over a certain number.

As for idiocy, stupidity and all the other things that get lobbed about this is the problem for Labour, from another thread.

Rain Newton-Smith, chief executive of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) on Monday said that businesses were in “damage control” mode following the Chancellor’s tax raid, with nearly two-thirds of employers cutting their hiring plans as a result.

Deutsche Bank has warned the Budget measures will cost the UK economy 100,000 jobs.

The Budget measures will “absolutely” make it harder for the 9.2m people who are economically inactive in the UK to rejoin the workforce, warns Anna Leach, chief economist at the Institute of Directors (IoD).

None of these groups fit your descriptions, in fact if Labour really have got it wrong I'd say the words are more apt in their direction.

To add to my previous comment, e-Petitions began in 2015. A quick look at the petitions database immediately throws up, for example:

During the election of 7th of may 2015 the conservative party wrote into it's manifesto a whole host of promises that they have subsequently failed to uphold. Examples include going ahead with reforms to child tax credits, which thankfully was blocked by the House of Lords.

Other examples include... Promising; not to cut front line service, not to have more top down NHS renegotiations, not to get rid of education maintenance allowance, not to meddle with sure smart, not to cut green investment, to honouring the freedom of information act, to reduce the national deficit and debt as promised and so on… We, the public, call upon government to put into action an emergency re-run of the general election

And:

The General Public were purposefully misguided before the 2015 election.The lies David Cameron told before the election have now been widely acknowledged as such, and it is only reasonable that the public should be allowed to vote with full knowledge about his true agenda in 2016.

Cameron has reneged on numerous promises he made before the 2015 election. It is evident that the education system and the NHS are being adversely affected by the ignorance of the government and Prime Minister.

Neither were debated, as the Fixed-Terms Parliament Act meant that the Petitions Committee had no power to trigger the motion that would have been required.

The right wing groups throwing their toys out of the prams about a Labour government are pathetic. I bet loads of them voted for Brexit and have posted endlessly about how it was democracy in action and won fair and square etc, and yet here they are, wanting democracy overturned to suit them. The petition is ridiculous.

Scary how some of the media moguls/non-doms who hate paying any tax are taking their cue from the good ol' USA and using Trumpian misinformation tactics to try and secure a Tory (or Reform - yikes) win next time, though.

Excellent work!

On the first page of search results for petitions from the 2015-17 parliament, there are 13 petitions calling for a general election or vote of no-confidence in the PM - there are 54 pages of search results in total.

I think it's safe to say this petition is not unprecedented.

And yet, almost none of the changes Labour have made have come into force yet. That's what I meant by "will take at least 4-6 months to move the needle".

And you still haven't addressed any of my other questions. At this point, I'm going to go ahead and assume you can't, given that you've been avoiding doing so since you first replied.

No businesses forward plan, you can see this in PMI report and consumers are rated on confidence which can be seen in the CCI figure. The CBI and IoD have commented on the impact this week - it was not good for Labour.

It was as early as the press conference that the latter was hit and this month for the PMI

Not sure what you're waiting on in particular re questions

As for Labour predicting outcomes, do you think they planned stagnating growth and contracting private sector or have they made a mistake?

Rain Newton-Smith, chief executive of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) on Monday said that businesses were in “damage control” mode following the Chancellor’s tax raid, with nearly two-thirds of employers cutting their hiring plans as a result.

UK industry has historically relied on low pay to compensate for low productivity. Of the G7 nations, the UK ranks 5th for productivity with only Italy and Japan being lower. UK industry investment crashed around Brexit and has remained low, and economic growth has tracked lower than for other nations over the same period of time. If a rise in labour costs c.3.5% (+/- 1.5% depending on sector) rise in labour costs doesn't trigger productivity investment, I'm not sure what will.

Economic growth has been stagnating for almost a decade whilst the cost of public services rises. This wasn't really a surprise to the CBI (which isn't as representative as it claims, in any case).

It's a wierd set up - basically employers want there to be enough taxes to subsidise their employees wages - but they don't want to pay those taxes or the decent wages ? But basically they are not economically viable ? But want the tax payer to keep bailing them out ?

I just heard on the radio on the way home a van making plant in Luton is closing at the end of March with 1100 jobs potentially going. They sited Labour carbon zero targets and increases to employers NI contribution as why it is happening.