The initial election petition failed to spark another national poll but provided ammunition for Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to mock the PM during Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons.
A petition to hold a General Election in the UK has now been signed by more than 640k people. Having already surpassed the threshold for MPs to debate it of 100k last week, the now-awkward (for Keir Starmer) total has smashed new highs in just a few days.
The appeal urges supporters who back the view “we want an immediate general election to be held. We think the majority need and want change” to add their signatures.
The tally of individuals backing the petition on the official Parliament petition website shot up to around 137k just last Friday, and now sits at a whopping 640k (although probably much higher by the time you read this).
The petition, started by someone called Nicola Cree, must now be debated when Parliament returns from its summer recess, which marks the second occasion an appeal demanding a fresh run of last year’s July 4 general election has reached the benchmark on Parliament’s official petitions website to secure a debate in the last year.
Back in January, MPs deliberated over another similar submission after it amassed 2.8 million signatures.
The initial election petition failed to spark another national poll but provided ammunition for Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to mock the PM during Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons.
She declared it demonstrated “two million people asking him to go”.
Sir Keir hit back by describing the July 4 election result last year as a “massive petition” in its own right. In the previous year’s general election, Labour secured 412 seats, a stark contrast to the Tories’ 121.
However, Sir Keir’s party only managed to garner 33.7% of the vote share, barely more than the 32.2% achieved by Jeremy Corbyn in his calamitous 2019 election campaign and significantly less than the 45% Tony Blair attained for his Labour victory in 1997.
Labour has also been under mounting pressure from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, which won an unprecedented 14.3% of the vote share last year, resulting in six MPs in the Commons.
This number has since increased to seven following a by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in May, triggered after Labour MP Mike Amesbury was caught on camera punching a man in his constituency.
The Daily Star has reached out to Downing Street for a comment.
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