Two million Brits already want another election. Even the PM says he’s not surprised

London: Oscar winner Michael Caine has signed it, tech billionaire Elon Musk is promoting it, and now millions of Brits say they agree. Even Keir Starmer says he’s “not that surprised”.

A petition on the UK parliament’s website accusing the five-month-old Labour government of breaking promises and calling for a new general election has gathered more than 2 million signatures – the third highest since 2010.

Keir Starmer’s approval ratings have collapsed since his July election victory.Credit: Getty Images

While it cannot trigger a new election and is unlikely to drive one, parliament considers all petitions that get more than 100,000 signatures for a debate in the House of Commons.

Starmer, who has suffered the biggest fall in personal approval ratings after winning an election of any prime minister in the modern era, has argued that he “inherited a lot of problems” from the previous government and that he had decided to “take the hard decisions first”.

Asked about the petition on breakfast TV, Starmer said: “Look, I remind myself that very many people didn’t vote Labour at the last election.”

“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,” he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

“So, what my focus is on is the decisions that I have to make every day.”

The backlash comes five months after Labour won a landslide victory in the July general election, securing 9.7 million votes and 412 seats in the House of Commons. However, it only received 35 per cent of the vote – the lowest won by a single-party government since the end of the war. About 19 million people voted for other parties.

The petition was set up by Michael Westwood, the owner of “Britain’s cheapest pub”, the Wagon and Horses in Oldbury in the West Midlands, which sells pints for just £2.30 ($4.40). It reads: “I would like there to be another general election. I believe the current Labour government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead-up to the last election.”

In several media appearances since, Westwood has hit out at Starmer over a raft of unpopular policies like slashing winter fuel payments for thousands of pensioners and making inheritance tax changes for farmers. He felt he would be “chuffed” if it attracted 2000 signatures.

A new poll from Ipsos over the weekend found two-thirds of Britons felt worse off in the five months since Labour came to power. Sir John Curtice, a veteran British political scientist and professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said it was difficult to find a government that has “slipped as much in the polls as this government has so quickly.”

But Curtice cautioned: “You cannot seriously read public sentiment off the back of a petition.”

Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X and confidant and sidekick of US President-elect Donald Trump, has actively promoted the petition online. He will hold an influential post in Trump’s incoming government as the co-commissioner of the Department of Government Efficiency.

Musk factor

Musk’s feud with the British government took off in July when three children were stabbed to death in Southport, northern England, leading to riots across the country. He spread inaccurate claims about the government’s response and accused Starmer of running a “two-tier” justice system.

In a post on Monday, he shared a meme that compared British and American English in which “free speech” in the US was translated as “jail time” in the UK. A day earlier, he shared a graph showing Starmer’s declining approval ratings. “The voice of the people is a great antidote,” he wrote.

Others who are vocal about the petition online include Michael Caine, the 91-year-old actor whose film credits include Get Carter, Alfie and The Italian Job. Caine was a supporter of Brexit and maintained his position despite issues surrounding the UK’s supply chain.

Home Office Minister Alex Davies-Jones said Musk had previously said he “does not agree with interference in foreign governments”.

“And I believe he shouldn’t be doing the same,” she told Sky News.

British citizens and UK residents can set up a petition on the UK government or parliament website.

In order to sign a petition, you are asked to tick a box confirming you are a British citizen or resident and provide a postcode. While around 99 per cent of signatures are from the UK, The Independent reported at least 14,000 of the signatures were from people abroad, according to self-declared locations required in the petition forms, with thousands from the US, Spain, France and Australia.

In 2019, a petition calling for Brexit to be cancelled received 6.1 million signatures. Three years earlier, a call for a second Brexit referendum garnered 4.2 million names.