The 48 per cent of voters who wanted to remain in the EU are so upset by the Leave result that they have set up a parliamentary petition calling for a second referendum.
Titled ‘EU Referendum Rules triggering a 2nd EU Referendum’, the petition is so popular the government website is crashing.
It follows 51.9 per cent of the population voting for Brexit after the result was confirmed this morning.
It reads:
We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based on a turnout less than 75% there should be another referendum.
Unsurprisingly, a vast majority of people supporting the petition backed Britain to Remain in the EU. But as yesterday’s referendum turnout was only 72.2 per cent, the call is for new rules to be implemented if a referendum’s turnout is less than 75 per cent based on a vote outcome of less than 60 per cent.
The petition, which currently has 110,818 signatures, is climbing at roughly a thousand signatures a minute.
At the time of writing, the petition is difficult to access, presumably due to the surge of traffic. Out of five attempts to access the site at different times, I was only able to get through once.
The site states that the government will respond to all petitions that get more than 10,000 signatures.
And petitions that get more than 100,000 signatures will have to be considered by parliament for debate, as was the case with the cannabis legalisation petition last year.
While it’s not yet clear if this will be taken seriously and result in a second referendum, the petition has over 110,000 signatures so far and is rapidly climbing. So there is no doubt that it will be sent to parliament and debated.
Considering David Cameron never triggered Article 50, it means, essentially, the UK’s official declaration to the EU that it wants to leave hasn’t been delivered. So, legally, there very well could be a second referendum.
