This one of two articles on the General Election petition in our pages today. This one focuses on possible outcomes. The other (below), by Gillian Dymond, discusses reasons for signing.
THE ‘Call a General Election‘ petition, which has been widely reported across the media as well as on TCW, could bring about major change—but only if people keep signing it!
It is hoped by many that the petition is on track to beat the previous Parliamentary record of 6.1 million signatures. This was a call in November 2019 to revoke Article 50 and for the UK to stay in the EU. However, given that in the 2016 EU Referendum, 17,410,742 (51.89 per cent) voted to leave the EU, 6.1 million signatures were simply not enough to justify having a debate in Parliament, let alone another referendum so soon. Arguably, the number of signatures compared with the 16 million-plus at the Referendum suggested a loss of support for ‘Remain’.
However, Westwood’s petition, calling for a fresh General Election, needs to be considered in the same way — the context being the proportion of votes cast in the election for the Labour Party. A petition calling for a General Election with only three million or so signatures when Labour got 9,708,716 votes in July can’t succeed. But should it keep accelerating, all that could change. If it garnered more signatures than the votes Labour obtained in the GE, say about 10million, there is all to play for. That number would be equivalent to 20 per cent of all those who are registered to vote (48,208,507). And that, it could be argued, would justify calling a General Election.
Sir Keir Starmer is not wrong when he says it is not our system to call General Elections because of a petition. Yet perhaps he shouldn’t be too sure of himself if the government party is accused of brazenly breaking electoral promises. Millions believe that to be the case, and there is a widespread loss of public trust. In this scenario, more people signing the petition than voted Labour would be hard to ignore or for him to insist his government still had a mandate—or indeed the confidence of the country. Which brings us to the question of the King’s constitutional responsibility in these circumstances. Could he advise the PM of the need to call a GE?
Until relatively recently, the monarch could dismiss a Prime Minister and make a personal choice of successor. If Starmer refused to heed his advice and call an election, could the King choose a member of the cabinet who would? Although it is hard to see that happening today (the practice being for political parties ‘to determine and communicate clearly to the Sovereign who is best placed to be able to command the confidence of the House of Commons’), it would also be hard for the King to ignore such clear levels of public dissatisfaction and distrust.
There are other options. The Prime Minister himself could decide to listen and respond to key areas of grievance—raising national insurance and inheritance tax on farmers, to take just two. The government could choose to test public support or otherwise through specific referendums, and ditch them if they lose. This really is what this petition underlines—the need for more direct democracy by referendums which would make the government listen to the people’s wishes and build back trust in the system.
Referendums might also include the relentless pursuit of net zero policies, the imposition of DEI requirements and other ‘woke’ agendas, and censorship across the public and private sectors. Military and defence supports for Ukraine — some £18 billion committed to date — is another area over which there is public disquiet. Immigration control and ECHR membership are all issues the public want to have their voice heard on: both parties are out of touch with public opinion.
The bottom line is that if the public wants to get a significant change of direction on any of these, and if, as Bruce Newsome wrote in TCW yesterday, ‘there’s got to be some change in the way we vote’, it’s crucial that 10million sign the petition. It is not an impossible goal with the mainstream media discussing and promoting it as well as social media. The petition has already been backed by many Conservatives and Reform UK MPs, and more widespread support is coming from other parties and independents too. This should also inspire the opposition parties to at least call for a vote of no confidence. That would keep the momentum up.
This happening would demonstrate that the Parliamentary petitions process can work for the individual citizen and create surprise results. One thing is for sure: the evolving Parliamentary petitions process will never be the same, and it will come under great pressure for reform, ideally to a Swiss type of system where petitions obtaining an acceptable number of signatures (in the UK’s case about 1million) could result in a referendum. That can only be a positive. But for petitions to call an early General Election, the bar would have to be set far higher at about 20 or 25 per cent.
In the end, it is about being able to hold the Government to account, and for that, we need reform. Backing this petition is a way forward and an opportunity not to be missed.
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The ‘Call a General Election’ petition: Why I and so many others have signed
ACROSS the country people have rushed to sign the petition calling for a general election. In many constituencies more than 5 per cent of the electorate have taken the opportunity to express their dissatisfaction with a government which is only a few months into its term of office. In Essex and the Thames Estuary, favoured boltholes of families fleeing a London which no longer bears any resemblance to the city where they and their ancestors were born, the tally has risen to over 7 per cent.
Sir Keir Starmer has dismissed these figures as irrelevant. Of course he has. With a parliamentary majority of the size he enjoys, why should he be disturbed by the protests of a handful of disgruntled plebs: in his eyes, a rabble of far-right racists, with a smattering of farmers and pensioners and rich people unfairly dodging ‘equity’ by paying for their children’s education thrown in?
The Government have now announced that there will be a televised debate on the petition on January 6. All but the most naïve of us signatories know perfectly well that there is no chance of a repeat election: nor do we need to be lectured by Andrew Marr on the absolute necessity, in a democratic system, for those who are in a minority to be good losers and knuckle under until they are invited to go to the polls again in a few years’ time.
So why, knowing that we can confidently expect no action to be taken, have I, and millions like me, signed this petition?
Sir Keir says that since ‘very many people didn’t vote Labour at the last election’ it is not surprising that some of them are asking for a re-run. However, in every election sizeable minorities do not vote for the winning party, and usually we grit our teeth and bear it.
What makes it different this time is the fact that the Starmer government has managed to do something which is unprecedented within living memory: they have secured the absolute power of a landslide majority in the Commons on the basis of minimal public support.
Yes, Sir Keir, in spite of your party’s overwhelming presence on the green benches, 80 per cent of those eligible to vote did not give you a mandate. You can claim it only by grace of one in five of the electorate, and a lot of help from our quirky electoral system. That being so, you should have had the humility to acknowledge the limited nature of your victory, stuck religiously to the few promises given or implied in the run-up to the election, and attempted to promote greater unity in a divided nation.
Instead, you have reneged on promises and, far worse, exacerbated divisions, most egregiously during the wave of anger that swept the country in the wake of the Southport atrocity. Far from easing tensions, you drove them underground, refusing to understand or appreciate the wider causes of unrest. This, after your eagerness to ‘take the knee’ in deference to the Black Lives Matter riots in America, was inexcusably inflammatory.
In consequence, your electoral triumph is perceived as being doubly unfair: unfair in the outcome, and unfair in the way you have responded to our different ‘communities’ since assuming power. Though the two-thirds of us who supported other parties might have grudgingly accepted your unmerited parliamentary supremacy had you proceeded with greater circumspection, your haste to inflict ideologically-motivated taxes and the knee-jerk venom of the police response you authorised when thousands of honest, law-abiding people whose concerns have been ignored and despised by a whole succession of governments dared to stage a largely peaceful demonstration in the neighbourhood of Downing Street on July 31, have served only to increase the perception of unfairness.
Is it any wonder that the public should resort to an escape valve for their seething sense of injustice?
We know that there is no chance of this parliament being dissolved. Most of us, in fact, would be horrified if we were forced to go to the polls again so soon. As things stand, this could lead only to a hung parliament, with endless bickering, and the horrid prospect of Greens and Lib Dems calling the tune.
The point of the petition is that it gives a voice which the establishment would prefer to deny to those who have been told for years that their opinions and preferences are inadmissible, even hateful; who, on July 4, could find no candidate fit to represent them; who did not want Labour; who had lost faith in the Conservatives; who raised their eyes to heaven at the thought of Lib Dems and Greens; who were not yet prepared to throw caution to the winds and risk wasting their vote on Reform. At a time when Labour had already transformed itself from the patriotic party of the working class into the cheer-leaders of jet-setting globalists favouring governance by technocrats and ‘experts’, and with the Conservatives following suit, no credible opposing force in favour of representative government within an independent nation state had yet emerged. Only in the resulting confusion of loyalties and abstentions could Sir Keir have secured his impressive majority of seats.
The hope is that by the time we are next called upon to cast our votes we will be offered a flourishing alternative to the alliance of big-State, globally-orientated socialism and inhuman technocracy which has been increasingly thrust upon us by both Labour and Conservative governments ever since we were tricked into joining the ‘Common Market’, and that a truly patriotic prime minister will be able to effect a Restoration along the lines suggested by Dr David Starkey, repealing in its entirety the legislation which has transferred power away from Parliament into the hands of quangos, think tanks and judges over the past quarter of a century.
No doubt the present government has a long time to run before we are rid of it; no doubt it will continue to inflict grievous damage on the country: but we can keep our hopes up by looking at the map which accompanies Mr Westwood’s petition. It is coloured to show at a glance the support in each constituency: the darker the red, the greater the number of signatories. The sweep of red across county after county, and, in particular, in seats which Labour gained by a whisker on July 4, proclaims unequivocally that England and, indeed, Wales, have had enough. Any watering-down to orange is rare, and only in the strongholds of academia and the big cities, where the propounders of wacko theories and the beneficiaries of big government congregate, are there blobs of dismissive yellow. Northern Ireland, strangely, is uninterested, and Scotland is comparatively unenthusiastic: but Scots living in England may well have swelled the count in constituencies south of the border, outnumbering, as they most probably do, the five to six million or so who have chosen to remain subject to the SNP.
Meanwhile, the number of signatories keeps rising. As I write the total is 2,856,785, and still they come . . .
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