Petition Bombshell Leaves Starmer Red-Faced as Furious Brits Demand Snap Election

Sir Keir Starmer is facing a growing backlash after a petition calling for an “immediate general election” smashed through the threshold needed to trigger a debate in Parliament. It’s a bit of an embarrassing moment for the Prime Minister, with more than 137,000 people signing the appeal — and counting.

The petition, which urges voters to back the belief that “we want an immediate general election to be held. We think the majority need and want change,” has more than doubled in support within just 24 hours. The numbers are still rising fast.

This isn’t the first time calls for a rerun of last year’s July 4 general election have caught fire. The Express reports that this is now the second such petition to clear the 100,000-signature mark required to get MPs talking about it in Parliament. The last one, back in January, drew a staggering 2.8 million signatures and was debated in the Commons — but didn’t result in an actual election.

It did, however, give plenty of ammo to the opposition. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch didn’t hold back at Prime Minister’s Questions, poking fun at Starmer by saying it showed “two million people asking him to go”, reported the Daily Star.

Starmer, for his part, brushed it off and pointed to Labour’s performance at the last general election. “The July 4 election result was a massive petition,” he said, referencing Labour’s landslide win which saw them secure 412 seats to the Conservatives’ 121.

But dig into the numbers, and it’s not all glowing. Despite the seat count, Labour only pulled in 33.7% of the vote share. That’s barely ahead of what Jeremy Corbyn managed in 2019 — 32.2% — a campaign widely considered a disaster. And it’s miles off the 45% Tony Blair achieved during his landslide victory in 1997.

Adding to the pressure, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party is continuing to rattle the political establishment. Last year they managed a shock 14.3% of the vote share, which translated into six MPs making it into the Commons. That number has since grown to seven, thanks to a by-election win in Runcorn and Helsby in May.

That by-election came about after Labour MP Mike Amesbury was caught on camera punching a man in his own constituency — an incident that only added to the sense that Labour has been wobbling even after its big win.

Meanwhile, it’s not just calls for an election that have been gaining steam online. Another popular petition, this one demanding asylum seekers lose their benefit entitlements, has now attracted over 420,000 signatures — showing a growing public appetite to challenge the government’s direction on several fronts.

While there’s no official requirement for Starmer to call another election just because of a petition, the rising numbers and public frustration are hard to ignore. The pressure is clearly mounting from both inside and outside Westminster, and it’s making the Prime Minister’s victory lap look more like a tightrope walk.