What should we read into the fact that more than two million people have signed a petition demanding Keir Starmer call a general election?
In one way, not very much. Since 2011 people have been able to voice their concerns via the petition.parliament.uk website. The government is supposed to respond to any petition with more than 10,000 signatures, while those with more than 100,000 “will be considered for a debate in Parliament”. Note: “considered”, not guaranteed. The petitions website is not a forum for a kind of direct democracy, more a cross between a litmus test for the mood of the country and a form of nationwide group therapy.
The most successful (if you can call it that) petition was launched in February 2019, and called for the UK to revoke Article 50 and remain in the European Union. It received 6.1 million signatures, and was debated in Westminster Hall in April 2019. Notably, Article 50 was not revoked and the UK continued on its path to leave the EU in January 2020. Which should tell you something about the democratic heft of the petitions system.
Starmer is not going to call an election less than five months after the last one just because of a website. The petition doesn’t affect his landslide majority or his authority as Prime Minister. In a parallel universe (or, indeed, the last parliament) where the government looks on the brink of collapse, this sort of thing could help tip the balance. You can imagine a petition like this spurring Tory MPs to desert Boris Johnson in 2022, for example. But while Labour MPs may be deeply dismayed by the way the party’s poll ratings have plummeted since July, they’re not about to bring down their own government.
And remember, signatories of the petition don’t even need to be British voters – or, in fact, live here at all. The petition website says only UK citizens or residents can sign and requires them to put in a postcode, but there is no verification process. We have no idea how many of the 2.1 million (it’s gone up since I started writing this) people who have signed it so far would be eligible to vote were Starmer to suddenly decide to acquiesce. For that matter, we have no idea if they are real people at all.
This consideration is particularly pertinent given Elon Musk has fanned the flames over this particular petition – a citizen of the US, Canada and South Africa, and increasingly the personal nemesis of Keir Starmer. The intricately nebulous media ecosystem has picked it up: all the UK right-wing newspaper websites currently have it on their homepages, with headlines including phrases like “mounting fury” and “vote now”.
Interestingly, very few of them seem to mention the anti-Brexit petition with three times as many signatories. A fun game to play is to look at some of the right-wing figures who have signed or promoted the general election petition and go back to see what they said a few years ago about attempts to reverse the 2016 Brexit vote. Denying the will of the people and thwarting democracy come up a lot. It seems some exercises in democracy are sacrosanct and others are up for debate, depending on your personal political ideology.
For now, Starmer should be wary of three things. First, there is a real sense of anger at the start the Labour government has made, reflected not just in this petition but in poll ratings and the council seats the party has lost since the July election. Starmer and co may think their decisions on things like the winter fuel allowance and changing inheritance tax on farms are both justifiable and justified, but communication on these points has been lacking.
Second, if Labour thought the right in this country was going to go lick its wounds for a bit and give the new government a chance to breathe, they were mistaken. The depleted Conservatives – not to mention Nigel Farage and his insurgent Reform party – are going to use every trick at their disposal to delegitimise the government. Labour MPs might think this unfair, but it is the reality – and they had better get used to it.
And third, Elon Musk is now a player in British politics, whether we want to admit it or not. He’s already sparred with Starmer over the response to the riots over the summer and has his own unique opinions on UK law when it comes to things like hate speech and contempt of court. Now he is widening his area of interest, and though none of us know what will happen to the influence of Twitter-now-called-X in this rapidly changing media landscape, it seems he has the potential to cause the government real problems. Time for a hastily arranged invitation for tea at Downing Street, perhaps?
[See also: Why Rachel Reeves is channelling Thatcher]
Listen to the New Statesman podcast
Content from our partners
Related
