Petitions calling for a general election - from 2022, left, and this year

OPINION: Petitions, petitions, and why snowflakes need to get over it…

Paul JonesDecember 1, 20240 Comment0

PROTEST has once again commandeered the pages of our beloved national newspapers this week.

However, rather than the genuine concerns of farmers (and the rather-less-genuine concerns of Jeremy Clarkson), it is not concerns over tax changes that leads the news, but rather that bastion of heavyweight current affairs – the internet petition – that has been deemed the most important story all UK people should read.

We’ve discussed the seemingly bottomless pit of pathetic prose our national press will pilfer on these pages before.

But, before I get completely engrossed in finding more p-based alliteration, I am claiming another go at trying to look through the screaming headlines and instead, approach this as you would hope the media in any sane nation would.

Sadly, sanity appears to be at a premium in newsrooms at the vast majority of our national media.

And this petition is the latest example of just how pathetic things have become.

As a reporter, covering issues of huge local importance – a planning application for hundreds of new homes, or the closure of much-loved village library, for example – a petition gaining thousands of signatures is a worthy lead.

A petition is a perfectly valid way of showing a community’s dissent at something – be it a housing development or the closure of a resource. But they have no actual power. Many a time have I watched on as a petition is handed over to someone, usually a council leader, even a minister, ultimately to no effect whatsoever.

But the symbol is important. And that’s only right.

The ultimate petition, of course, is a general election. This ‘petition’ sees absolutely everyone in the country given the chance to ‘sign up’ to approve, or oust, a government that will set the rules they must abide for the next five years.

We had one not five months ago.

Yet, when a chap called Michael Westwood set up a petition calling for a fresh general election on the government website for such things, and it started acquiring signatures, you’d think the country was in revolt.

It isn’t.

Even when the petition hit more than 2.5 million signatures, it didn’t mean people were baying for parliamentary blood, as it were.

And here’s why…

To argue what many of our national papers – and outspoken grifters online – are claiming; that this is some sort of uprising and valid claim to a new poll, you would have to ignore many, many things.

For example, we must discard the fact we had a general election in July, as mentioned above – exactly the thing the petition is calling for – and that the Labour party, whatever you think of them, won. That result must be, of course, ignored.

Almost 29 MILLION people voted in July. More than 9.5 million people voted for a Labour candidate. More than 6.8 million for a Conservative party candidate. More than 3.5 million voted for a Liberal Democrat candidate.

So, let’s be honest, 2.5 million – even 3m, or 4m – is nowhere near enough to justify the outburst of yelling we’ve heard from folks who didn’t like the result (many of whom warm their bottoms in the luxurious editor’s chairs of Fleet Street).

However, ignoring the fact a petition is in no way, shape, or form a valid way to demand a general election, and that many of the signatures on this fresh petition have been shown to be made up, let’s look at something else.

In June 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU. You remember, there was a bit of a to-do about it…

Anyway, a referendum was held on the matter, and 32 million people turned up to cast their vote. And they voted to leave the EU by, roughly, 52% to 48%. The difference between them was just under 1.3 million votes.

That’s fewer than have signed this petition, which has prompted such outcry from the usual cry babies. Cry babies who, lest we forget, have spent the ensuing eight years following the EU referendum telling ‘remoaners’ to ‘get over it’.

Also, it might be worth reminding these snowflakes, a petition calling for a second EU referendum that same month in 2016 received – you guessed it didn’t you? – more than 2.5 million signatures.

Funny, I don’t remember the Daily Mail or the Express screaming about how that was a “huge blow” for Brexit (as they did about this one for Sir Keir Starmer), do you?

Another one, about ending child poverty, received more than 1.1 million signatures in 2011. No headlines about that either.

And, you won’t believe this but honestly, it’s true, a petition launched in 2022 calling *for a general election* garnered more than 900,000 signatures.

How many Express or Daily Mail front pages? None, because those in charge at that time were the Conservative Party and these papers are, to put it bluntly, absolutely shameless.

The 2022 petition even got a response from Ms Truss’ Government, which included the following:

“The UK is a Parliamentary democracy and the Conservative Party remains the majority party. The Prime Minister has pledged to ensure opportunity and prosperity for all people and future generations.”

Yeah, sit down, moaners. Get over it. But they were quite right (about the only time Ms Truss was, so let’s give her that).

Yet, when the *current* petition approached 1 million signatures, we got headlines like, ‘General election petition hits one million names in humiliating new milestone for Labour’ (yes, from the Express – did you guess?).

There was none of that in 2022, when Liz Truss was leading our country in near-financial catastrophe. Funny that.

You see why they ought to be ashamed?

For none of their pathetic, polarising whines and biased nonsense does anything to help this country.

We would be better served by a national media that presents facts. Discusses facts. Speaks to experts who can explain and present facts and, perhaps most importantly, tries to stay in this real world we are all living in. A world where people are struggling to make ends meet, environmental collapse looms large, and much of the world is at war.

But we aren’t, because they’re all led by partisan hacks who refuse to stop crying after losing an election.

That would be fine, but the actions of these babies is harming us.

It’s harming us because, like the ‘remoaners’ before them, the people who didn’t want a Labour government refuse to ‘get over it’, as they so helpfully advised. Instead, they insist on whinging, throwing tears of fury out of each day’s news pages.

Sadly, this has an impact on their readers – who they clearly despise and treat as idiots.

The papers and people are free to complain, free to criticise, free to analyse. But using a petition as the basis for a general election? Do me a favour.

Even Mr Westwood – the chap who set this petition up, remember – has admitted how ridiculous it would be for this to lead to an actual general election.

Kay Burley, on Sky News, asked him whether he thought people who voted in the actual general election were giving the Labour party a “full five years”, he said: “Yeah, I do agree to that. But what they promised and what they are delivering, in my opinion, is a different thing altogether.”

Yes, quite, it is your opinion, which no more or less valid than mine – and I don’t pretend for a minute anyone will listen when I ask for a general election.

And, when further pressed on whether they should be given more time, he went further, adding: “Of course. And let’s be truthful about it, will this cause a general election, I very much doubt that, so they will get the time, of course they will.”

At the risk of sounding cruel, and it might be a bit harsh, but cry me a river Mr Westwood. And cry me a river Daily Mail. And please, cry and cry, Daily Express.

Every single day of every single parliament in our history, someone, somewhere, has been calling for a general election. Someone, somewhere, is mortified at how whichever government in power at the time is behaving.
But they voted, someone won, and they are in power.

‘Get over it. You lost’.

So what do you think? Is this petition a valid reason for calling a general election? Or is it just another example of the shameless politicisation of our national press?

You can drop me a line to paul@blackmorevale.net, but as usual, please only do so if you are going to be polite! Thanks.

And you can read more of my opinion pieces here: