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Politics

21st Mar 2019

Support for Anti-Brexit petition surges past 600,000 signatures, crashes website

Marc Mayo

Brexit petition

The website crashed on Thursday morning as voters made their opinion known.

With just over a week to go until the Brexit deadline, and with particular no end in sight to the mayhem, a petition to revoke Article 50 has crashed the government website after surpassing 600,000 signatures.

Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement has been rejected by huge margins in two parliamentary votes and her request to extend the process of leaving the EU by a few weeks was poorly received.

On Wednesday, EU Council president Donald Tusk told the prime minister it would be conditional on her deal passing through the House of Commons. In response, May castigated politicians for not accepting her plan – a tactic which went down like a lead balloon with the vast majority of MPs.

A petition to revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU was subsequently launched and 300,000 UK voters had registered their support by midnight.

Come 9am on Thursday morning, that number had soared past 620,000 and the high amount of traffic crashed the government website hosting the petition.

Official petitions need only 100,000 signatures to be considered for a parliament debate.

Looking at the map of those backing the petition, it is spread quite wide across the United Kingdom with Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol, London, Manchester and Edinburgh each adding thousands of voices in an attempt to halt Brexit.

“The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is ‘the will of the people’,” reads the petition’s statement.

“We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now, for remaining in the EU. A People’s Vote may not happen – so vote now.”

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Topics:

Brexit,Politics