The petition to hold a second referendum on EU membership has so far attracted over 4,100,000 signatures. Let me put that in words to emphasise the number – over four million one hundred thousand.
It runs until the end of November, and any petition which gets more than 100,000 signatures is considered for a Parliamentary debate. Even the most highly supported petitions rarely get more than a few hundred thousand signatures. This one outstrips all of them by a long way. A very long way.
There was a government response over the weekend, widely reported in the media. Here is the response in full:
The European Union Referendum Act received Royal Assent in December 2015, receiving overwhelming support from Parliament. The Act did not set a threshold for the result or for minimum turnout.
The EU Referendum Act received Royal Assent in December 2015. The Act was scrutinised and debated in Parliament during its passage and agreed by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Act set out the terms under which the referendum would take place, including provisions for setting the date, franchise and the question that would appear on the ballot paper. The Act did not set a threshold for the result or for minimum turnout.
As the Prime Minister made clear in his statement to the House of Commons on 27 June, the referendum was one of the biggest democratic exercises in British history with over 33 million people having their say. The Prime Minister and Government have been clear that this was a once in a generation vote and, as the Prime Minister has said, the decision must be respected. We must now prepare for the process to exit the EU and the Government is committed to ensuring the best possible outcome for the British people in the negotiations.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The media is behaving as if this is the end of it, when in fact all that has happened is that the government has restated its original position. Let’s face it, after having repeatedly quoted Cameron – who it represents after all – in categorically stating there would not be another referendum, the FCO was hardly likely to do a complete U-turn and say there would be one after all.
At the bottom of the email, there is this non-FCO text:
This petition has over 100,000 signatures. The Petitions Committee will consider it for a debate. They can also gather further evidence and press the government for action.
The Committee is made up of 11 MPs, from political parties in government and in opposition. It is entirely independent of the Government.
So, all that has really happened is that the government has dug in its heels as the scales of public opinion have continued to swing heavily – to the tune of 4.1 million signatures and counting – against it. The biased media has not seen fit to clarify this, in an attempt to prevent any opposition to Brexit gaining ground.
There’s a certain irony in the origins of the petition. Apparently, William Oliver Healey set it up when he expected the outcome of the referendum to be a narrow vote to remain in the EU. The petition argues quite logically that a tiny majority wanting to stay would be unfair on a slightly smaller number wanting to leave. At that point, it had 22 signatures.
Now, I’m sure Mr Healey would agree that if 51.9% of the population voting to stay would have been unfair on the 48.1% voting to leave (if it had gone that way), then it is equally unfair now given that the result was the other way round. Actually, I’m pretty sure Mr Healey doesn’t agree with that at all, and he must have choked on his muesli when he got up on 24 June and saw the result. However, he probably choked on it a lot more in the two weeks since, as he couldn’t have foreseen that his petition would subsequently have been taken over by almost 200,000 times more people than had agreed with him prior to the referendum.
Cameron has f___ed this country up big time with his idiotic referendum. By refusing to try and rectify the wholly wrong result – a result which which he, along with William Oliver Healey, didn’t expect in his wildest dreams – he is f___ing it up even more.