A British petition to revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU has gathered more than three million signatures in under two days.
"The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is 'the will of the people'," reads the petition on the UK parliament website.
"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."
Petitions with more than 100,000 signatures are automatically considered for a debate in parliament.
READ: 'Give all dogs guns': the UK petitions that didn't make it before MPs
The petition was posted on Wednesday night by Margaret Anne Georgiadou. It gathered more than 100,000 signatures in its first two hours.
The petition was so successful that the page on the British parliament's website crashed for several hours on Thursday morning.
"Nearly 2,000 signatures are being completed every minute", the British parliament's Petition committee said on Twitter. "The rate of signing is the highest the site has ever had to deal with and we have had to make some changes to ensure the site remains stable and open for signatures and new petitions."
A map of the petition participants showed high numbers of Remainers in Edinburgh, London, Bristol, Cambridge and Brighton.
As of Thursday afternoon, the 10 most represented constituencies were:
1. Bristol West: 6453 (Thangam Debbonaire MP)
2. London Hornsey and Wood Green: 5545 (Catherine West MP)
3. Brighton Pavilion: 5475 (Caroline Lucas MP)
4. Edinburgh North and Leith: 5338 (Deirdre Brock MP)
5. Cambridge: 5419 (Daniel Zeichner MP)
6. London Islington North: 4938 (Jeremy Corbyn MP)
7. London Hackney North: 4745 (Diane Abbott MP)
8. London Hampstead and Kilburn: 4462 (Tulip Siddiq MP)
9. London Holborn and Saint Pancras: 4584 (Keir Starmer MP)
10. Oxford East: 4180 (Anneliese Dodds MP)
Many prominent personalities voiced their support for the petition. Actor Hugh Grant was one of them:
So did the chef Jack Monroe:
And the comedian David Mitchell, known for his role as 'Mark' in "Peep Show":
A previous petition which called to "revoke article 50 if there is no Brexit plan by the 25 of February" received 136,400 signatures and was subsequently debated in the House of Commons on 11 March. You can read the transcript of the debate here.
HalfAlligator on March 22nd, 2019 at 01:19 UTC »
It’s not my business being a kiwi but surely the process was bad from the beginning. It would work better how we did our flag referendum. First you agree you want to CONSIDER a change (tick a box during a regular election), then you come up with proposals, then you vote on changing or not and if so choose your particular proposal.
Going in with blind faith based on promises and propaganda was utterly foolish.
edit: This is not a comment on the wisdom of brexiting or not, it's a comment on the democratic process. Also I’m aware our flag referendum was a shambles... but that’s kinda the point. The proposal phase was shit and so the change never went through
Farrell-Mars on March 21st, 2019 at 23:44 UTC »
From across the sea, Brexit looks like a monumental fumble from the start. A small majority votes to change an entire economic underpinning; an incompetent class of leaders tries to negotiate the non-negotiable; meanwhile it’s a good bet the majority has in the interim shrunk to a minority. What’s wrong with another referendum? The ground clearly has shifted, there’s no deal to speak of. Smart voters will make this bad idea go away and allow the UK to “muddle along” as ever.
NeutronStarsAreHeavy on March 21st, 2019 at 22:57 UTC »
It gained one million signatures in less than eight hours. I made a Google sheet along with some JavaScript to track and chart signatures and predict when (if ever) it would exceed the number of Leave votes in the 2016 referendum:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rgpDCb5Hsm2XGagN69TXpM-LW8A0gwD4xrozYgBjKDw/edit#gid=176250026
Edit: Gold?! Wow, thanks very much. My first ever. I'm not even a professional statistician or programmer, just a bored undergraduate really.