Petition calling for Brexit to be cancelled passes one million signatures

A petition demanding Theresa May revokes Article 50 and cancels Brexit has passed one million signatures.

“The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is ‘the will of the people’,” the petition says.

“We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now, for remaining in the EU. A People’s Vote may not happen – so vote now.”

It has had the highest volume of sign-ups on record, Parliament’s Petitions Committee said.

The petition caused the official petitions website to crash, with a surge in support following the prime minister’s Downing Street speech on Wednesday.

She has repeatedly refused to reverse Brexit, pledging to deliver on the result of the 2016 referendum.

This saw more than 17 million people – 52% of those who voted – backing Brexit.

In her speech Mrs May pinned the blame on MPs for her move to seek a delay to Brexit from the end of this month to 30 June, telling voters: “I am on your side.”

“Revoke Article 50” started trending on Twitter soon after the PM’s address.

Actors Hugh Grant and Jennifer Saunders both promoted the petition on social media, as did physicist Brian Cox.

More than 600,000 had signed the petition by 9am, at which time the website reported an error message.

By 12.30pm, more than 800,000 had signed the petition with the website restored.

Almost 2,000 signatures were being added every minute on Thursday lunchtime, causing the site to crash multiple times.

A House of Commons spokesman said: “We know that the petitions website has been experiencing problems due to the number of people using the site.

“This is a mixture of people signing petitions and refreshing the site to see changes to the number of signatures.

“The majority of people are now able to use the website and we and the Government Digital Service are working to fix any outstanding problems as soon as possible.”

When asked about the technical problems, Commons leader Andrea Leadsom said: “Should it reach more than 17.4 million respondents then I’m sure there would be a very clear case for taking action.”

The petition is the third most popular petition on the Parliament website.

A petition from 2016 calling for a second referendum should the winning vote and turnout not meet a certain threshold is top of the pile with nearly 4.2 million signatures to date.

Another expression opposition to the prospect of a state visit from US President Donald Trump has 1.9 million signatures.

The most popular pro-Brexit petition has 375,000. It calls on the government to leave without a deal at the end of this month.

Parliament’s petitions website requires those signing petitions to tick a box confirming they are a British citizen or UK resident and give a name, email address, country and postcode.

A total of 960,000 signatories claim to be from the UK, followed by France (8,300), Spain (4,600) and Germany (3,700).

Signatures do not count if people do not click a link in a confirmation email, but signatories do not need to provide any proof of their address or citizenship.

(c) Sky News 2019: Petition calling for Brexit to be cancelled passes one million signatures