A petition demanding another referendum on Great Britain remaining in the European Union has received so many signatures online that the website crashed.
More than 1.5 million citizens have signed the petition, mostly from the UK’s big cities.
The petition, set up by William Oliver Healey, states: “We the undersigned call upon HM government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based on a turnout less than 75%, there should be another referendum.”
On Thursday, 51.9% of voters opted to leave the EU, and 48.1% voted to remain part of the bloc.
A map of the petition’s signatures indicated that most activity was in England’s major cities. The highest number of signatories came from London, where most boroughs backed remain in the referendum.
A House of Commons spokeswoman earlier said the site had temporarily been taken out of action due to “exceptionally high volumes of simultaneous users on a single petition, significantly higher than on any previous occasion.”
“UK parliament and the government digital service are aware of the issue and are working hard to resolve the problems as quickly as possible.”
The parliamentary petitions system is overseen by the petitions committee, who consider whether petitions that receive more than 100,000 signatures should be raised in the House. The committee is due to sit again on Tuesday.
Voters in Great Britain are not only sore losers, they are, to use the British colloquialism, balmy.
The surge came as nearly more than 100,000 people signed another petition calling on London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, to declare the capital independent from the UK and apply to join the European Union.
The Change.org petition had gathered more than 130,000 signatures by Saturday afternoon. The page, set up by James O’Malley, stated: “London is an international city, and we want to remain at the heart of Europe.
“Let’s face it – the rest of the country disagrees. So rather than passive-aggressively vote against each other at every election, let’s make the divorce official and move in with our friends on the continent.
“This petition is calling on mayor Sadiq Khan to declare London independent, and apply to join the EU – including membership of the Schengen zone (Umm, we’ll talk about the euro …).”
If the petition for a do-over Brexit is sour grapes, the effort to get London to declare itself an independent city is just plain loony. It shows how much Brexit has unhinged the leftist elites as ordinary people cast off their shackles to turn the world upside down.
An interesting scenario may be developing where the new conservative leader replacing Prime Minister Cameron — probably former London Mayor Boris Johnson — may call for new elections. Suppose the Labor Party wins a majority. Would they dare order another Brexit referendum based on the massive number of petition signatures?
It’s entirely possible given the refusal of the pro-EU forces to accept the reality of Brexit. It’s also possible that such a move to negate a democratic exercise like Brexit would enrage supporters and the margin of victory would be even higher.
There will be an effort to entice Great Britain back into the EU. But not until things quiet down on the refugee front and the economic price of leaving the EU becomes self-evident to most citizens. Until then, the elites and their supporters will stew in their own juice, still not believing that their perfect plans for Utopia were rejected by common people.
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