There is currently an on-line petition

Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU

The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is ‘the will of the people’. 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.

As of noon today it has reached 4.18 million signatures, up from 3 million yesterday morning and just a million two days ago. Guido Fawkes noted that there are a number of foreign signatures, some likely to be fake. A massive EU Second Referendum petition in July 2016 had large numbers of fake signatures created by bots, including large numbers from the Vatican and Antarctica, with at least 77,000 being removed. This might be happening with the current petition. This could be by bots, or by individuals making multiple signatures through using multiple email addresses. I have downloaded the data at around 8am this morning, when there were 3.78 listed signatures, of which 3.64 million were against the 650 UK constituencies.

Analysis By Constituency

I ran the 8am signatures by constituency against data from the General Election 2017, including for the sitting MP, the Political Party in 2017, the electorate and the valid votes cast. I have also used estimated Leave Vote figures by constituency from Politics Professor Chris Hanretty. Although they are estimates, I do believe it is very unlikely that they are more than a few percentage out. An estimated extreme Remain constituency would have been unlikely to have voted Leave. The Constituencies with the top 20 signatures are as follows.

Note that most of consituencies are Labour-held and in London. The constituencies of three key members of the Shadow Cabinet are included. Islington South and Finsbury (Rt Hon Emily Thornberry MP) is number 21 on the list.

Chuka Umunna MP has left the Labour Party. But alongside Caroline Lucas MP and Rt Hon Vince Cable MP, is a non-Labour MP with an extreme pro-Remain stance. All constituencies voted very strongly to Remain in the EU.

I suspect that there is some multiple voting going on. In every single constituency the signatures on an online petition are over a quarter of the number of valid votes in the 2017 General Election. Cities of London & Westminster Constituency exceeds 40%. This is the prime target if you want to send a scam message to the occupants of the Palace of Westminster.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are the bottom 20 constituencies for signatures.

None of the constituencies are in London or South of England. Note that 15 of the constituencies have Labour MPs and are located in the traditional Labour heartlands of the North of England, the Midlands and Wales. Na h-Eileanan an Iar is an exception in that it voted remain. But it is also by far the smallest constituency, so is an anomaly. On average there was a 67% Leave vote.

The dominance of the top 20 metropolitan constituencies had 358,560 signatures at 8am, or 10% of the UK total, compared to 355,526 of the bottom 156 constituencies. Yet in terms of a voice these top 3% of constituencies get represented in the media far more than the bottom 24%. That is a major reason a majority voted to Leave the EU. In many areas people were sick of being controlled by outsiders who have different perspectives, and will not listen to them. The EU Referendum was a big up-yours to the London-based Metropolitans.

Finally, here is a little pivot table of the bottom 156 constituencies by Region and by Party of the MP.

The constituencies represented are just 24% of the total, but around half those in the forgotten regions of Wales, North East, West Midlands and Yorkshire & Humber.

Kevin Marshall