A petition calling for a general election to remove the recently installed left-wing Labour Party government has garnered nearly three-quarters of a million backers in less than a week.
UPDATE 1700: The petition has now gained more than one million signatures.
The original story continues as follows:
A call for a new general election has received over 750,000 signatures at the time of reporting in what has been described as one of the fastest-growing petitions in Britain.
The petition states that the “current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election”, and therefore, the petition called for an election to be called.
While Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party swept to power in July with a 174 majority with 411 seats in the parliament — the best performance for the party since Tony Blair in 1997 — the party only won just over a third of voters.
Since coming to power, Prime Minsiter Starmer has seen his approval continually decline, pushing forward broadly unpopular leftist policies, such as cutting fuel aid subsidies to pensioners and seeking to expand the death tax to include family farms.
A survey this week from Ipsos found that just 23 per cent of the public have a favourable opinion of Starmer, compared to 52 per cent who hold a negative view of the prime minister.
Pollster John Curtice told Sky News: “We have never previously had a government starting with quite as low a share of the vote Labour got in July,” Sir John tells Sky News, referring to the party’s 174-seat majority despite a modest vote share of just 33.7 per cent .
“It’s also difficult to find a government that has slipped as much in the polls as this government has so quickly.”
Meanwhile, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has continued to rise in the polls since the election, topping the ranks of all politicians in the country at 28 per cent favourable compared to 48 per cent unfavourable.
Unsurprisingly, Reform UK MPs were quick to seize on the petition calling for a new election, with Farage’s deputy, Richard Tice, saying: “Let’s make this the biggest petition ever in the UK – sign, share, and spread the word.”
MP Rupert Lowe added: “Register your discontent, register your anger, register your disgust with this Labour Government… Send Starmer a message. Sign, share, and share again.”
In Britain, any official petition with over 100,000 signatures must be considered for a debate in Parliament, and the government is mandated to issue a response to any petition with more than 10,000 signatures.