'It's fantastically anti-democratic': Petition for another general election signed by millions worldwide

By Michaela Walters (with Emily, Jon & Lewis)

A petition calling for another general election has reached over 2.6 million signatures after a boost from Elon Musk. But are they all legitimate?

Read time: 3 minutes

In brief:

• 2.6 million people have signed a petition calling for another general election. The petition argues that Labour have broken promises made in their election campaign.
• The number of signatories more than doubled after Elon Musk shared a post about it on X.
• However, not everyone who has signed is a UK citizen - with people from 184 different countries contributing to the high number.

What’s the story?

“It's so fantastically anti-democratic”.

That’s Emily Maitlis on today’s episode of The News Agents. She’s referring to a petition doing the rounds on social media calling for another general election in the UK.

You might be thinking ‘wait, it wasn’t that long ago we had a general election’ - and you’d be right. There was a clear winner - Labour, if you missed the news.

But that’s not stopped over 2.6 million people (and counting) from signing a petition calling for another.

“I mean, we love elections, but even for us, it's probably a bit much,” Lewis Goodall jokes.

The petition on Parliament’s website, which was started by a Michael Westwood, simply reads:‘I would like there to be another General Election.

I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.’

Petitions with more than 100,000 signatures are considered for a debate in the Commons, but Keir Starmer, speaking on ITV’s This Morning, has ruled out another general election.

“I remind myself that very many people didn’t vote Labour at the last election. I’m not surprised that many of them want a rerun. That isn’t how our system works.,” he said.

The response shocked Lewis.

“I for one am absolutely amazed that Keir Starmer, five months after winning a 170 seat majority, isn't acceding to the demands of a random petition to have another general election in that time,” he says mockingly.

But, joking aside, 2.6 million signatories is no small number. So where did these people come from, and what has Elon Musk got to do with it?

What’s Elon Musk got to do with it?

Musk has long been a critic of Starmer - posting regularly on his social media platform X criticising the Prime Minister and the Labour government generally.

So of course, he didn’t miss out on the opportunity to promote the petition.

The Tesla founder quote-tweeted a post about the petition, writing ‘The people of Britain have had enough of a tyrannical police state’.

Following his intervention, the numbers of signatories on the petition doubled from one million to over two million, The Times reports.

It’s not the only tweet Musk has posted taking aim at Britain in the last few days.

He retweeted a post comparing British and American English that translated ‘free speech’ in the US as ‘jail time’ in the UK.

A day earlier he retweeted a post showing Starmer’s declining approval ratings, writing: ‘The voice of the people is a great antidote”.

The News Agents take

Elon Musk may be encouraging people to sign the petition, but Musk is “not famously a UK voter,” Emily points out.

And she’s got a point, because while the figures on the petition may seem quite significant, all is not what it seems.

“It's 3 million people from a whopping 184 different countries around the world, very few of whom have a vote in our election,” Emily explains, joking that maybe “the UAE should have a place at the table” on the matter.

Posts flying around social media are instructing people who live outside of the UK how to sign the petition, even if they have no business doing so, by sharing UK postcodes that you can input online in order to sign.

Lewis compares people on the right signing and promoting the petition to the remainers who could not accept the outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendum.

“You're just convincing yourself somehow there's this tremendously big appetite in the country to rerun the electoral event.

“It is a little indicator of where the temperature is, and the politics is, on the right at the moment,” he says.

The people signing may feel the petition is on to something, but if Starmer’s response is anything to go by, it’s probably best not to get your polling cards out yet.

“Do they really think that our parliamentary democracy is now in the hands of whether there's a petition or not?” Jon asks.

“The people have spoken,” he adds.

“Yeah - but shut up,” is the signatories response.

Listen to the latest episode of The News Agents.

---