Sir Keir Starmer has ruled out an early general election after a petition calling for a second vote reached two million signatures.
The petition was launched over the weekend and says there should be another vote, just four months after Labour won a landslide, because they have “gone back on their promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election”.
By Monday mid-morning, it had reached two million signatures and was climbing fast.
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But the prime minister said he would not be calling another election.
However, he said he was “not surprised” those who did not want to support Labour wanted a second vote.
“Look, I remind myself that very many people didn’t vote Labour at the last election,” he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
“I’m not surprised that many of them want a rerun. That isn’t how our system works. There will be plenty of people who didn’t want us in, in the first place.
“So, what my focus is on is the decisions that I have to make every day.”
Petitions on the government website are considered for debate by MPs after 10,000 signatures. Petitions get a government response after the tally reaches 100,000.
Even before Sir Keir ruled one out, an early general election was unlikely as Labour has a large majority and only the prime minister has the power to ask the King to call a general election.
Elon Musk, seen here with Donald Trump, posted about the petition. Pic: Reuters
Over the weekend, MPs considered to be from the right of the Tories or from Reform UK, were urging people on social media to sign the petition.
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice and Conservative shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith were among those sharing the petition.
Donald Trump aide Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, reposted a link to a post which said it had got 200,000 signatures in a few hours. He wrote: “Wow.”
Musk has previously spoken out against Sir Keir Starmer, calling him “two-tier Keir” over accusations police were treating communities according to their racial background in different ways.
Some X users have been urging people from all over the world to sign the petition and provided a list of postcodes so they could pretend they were UK voters – a stipulation of being able to sign the petition.
The government has faced a sizeable backlash against some of the policies it has introduced, including inheritance tax on farms, cutting winter fuel payments, raising employers’ national insurance and applying VAT to private school fees.
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The petition was launched by Michael Westwood, the owner of the Wagon and Horses pub in Oldbury in the West Midlands.
He told the Daily Express: “I think people have had enough, people have seen what’s happened over in America as well, and I think that’s had a knock-on effect that, actually, if people stand together and vote then we can make a change.”
The latest Ipsos political pulse poll found the Labour Party is not viewed very well, with 28% of the public holding a favourable view and 49% unfavourable.
Labour’s overall performance since coming into power is ranked as four out of 10.
A majority (56%) said they felt the country is heading in the wrong direction, while two in five Britons said they are worse off since Labour came to power.
