It was not debated in the House of Commons (as some people erroneously thought it would be ) it was debated by the Petitions Committee, which is one of the Parliamentary Select Committees, (this is a Select Committee set up to debate Online Petitions.)
The Petitions Committee goes about its business without much media attention - it doesn’t often attract as much attention as it did for this particular debate…
I did start to watch this particular Petition Committee on TV when this discussion was taking place, but must admit I started nodding off after 15 minutes, so I “fast forwarded” to the last few minutes.
As expected, the Committee had no power to overturn the results of the democratic General Election and that was made clear at the beginning of the debate, so there wasn’t much to do, apart from letting a selection of Petitioners have their say and recognising and praising the Petition system that allowed about 3 or 4 million people (out of a population of 68 million) to exercise their right to petition Parliament about something they felt strongly about.
I think that was about all there was to it, really.
The democratic part is that you can throw them out at the next election. Part of the problem in the UK is that you have to wait five years whereas as here it is only three
John Howard came up with the phrase “core and non core promises” ie there are some you wil keep no matter what and some you might have to abandon.
His government was not only wiped out at the next election but he also lost his safe seat after breaking the industrial relations promise.
(mind you it didn’t take a genius to work that one out)
Sorry but them’s the rules. Perhaps he will be so unpopular that the party will throw him out before the election. It is hard to overthrow a sitting PM but Australia has done it many times and in quick succession.
Actually, 68 million people are not all entitled to vote. Also, the turnout for the 2024 GE was poor. So in essence, if you take away the voters who voted for other parties than labour, 3 or 4 million would have probably swung the result in favour of another party winning boot.
Obviously, the whole population cannot vote, Foxy - some of them are children!
I believe there’s about 48 million registered voters, who are entitled to vote, so about 8% of registered voters signed the petition.
I’m not following your logic when you say
“ if you take away the voters who voted for other parties than labour, 3 or 4 million would have probably swung the result in favour of another party winning”
How could you know how many of the people who signed the petition voted for Labour and how many voted for parties other than Labour?
Some of the petitioners may have been people who had voted Labour and thought the Govt had done things that were not in their manifesto - but I saw lots of Reform and Tory supporters saying they had signed the petition.
Judging by the way some politicians from other parties were encouraging their supporters to sign the petition, I’d say it’s a fair bet that the majority of those signing the petition had not voted for Labour in the election anyway, so whatever Labour had put in their manifesto would have made no difference to the way they voted.
I think you said you had signed the petition but you had not voted for Labour? I expect there was a lot of people who did the same.
Can you tell me what “completely different” things have been done that were expressly set out oppositely in their manifesto? You stated “completely different” so don’t just highlight “not done yet”. You need to identify things done that were opposite to what the manifesto stated.
To help:
Restore economic stability with tough new spending rules, allow businesses to plan, with a cap on corporation tax at 25%, and a new industrial strategy to give business long-term certainty for investment decisions.
Unleash investment with a new National Wealth Fund to invest in the industries for the future, and Great British Energy to accelerate the transition to Clean Power. Our plan will create 650,000 jobs in the industries of the future.
Reform our planning rules to build the railways, roads, labs and 1.5 million homes we need and develop a new 10-year infrastructure strategy.
Reform decision-making to shift power away from Westminster to turbo-charge the efforts of mayors across the country, with new powers over transport, skills, housing and planning, and employment support, along with new growth plans for towns across the country.
Reform our jobs market by getting people back into work with careers and job centre reform, a New Deal for Working people to make work pay, a new childcare offer to get people into work, and a plan to tackle our health and mental health challenges to get people back to work.
Reform the immigration and skills system to ensure Britain is developing home-grown skills with workforce plans to meet the needs of industries and the economy.
Introduce a modern industrial strategy, working in partnership with businesses and workers to grasp the opportunities of new technologies, with an AI sector plan, a new national data library to support cutting-edge research, 10-year budgets for key world innovation institutions, and planning reform to build the datacentres and infrastructure we need.
It was fun while it lasted! A cracker of a news story across the planet, I assume every one of the 3 or 4 million people that signed knew it was a waste of time, but that didn’t put them off.
Do hours of research to answer all of Lincs questions…
I don’t think the petition was a waste of time, it acted as a barometer as to how people felt about Starmer and the labour parties deviation from their original manifesto. Where else would the general public have a chance to express their views?
Helen and Boot can gloss over the result all they want by quoting figures and peoples political affiliations, but over 3 million signatures is a very good response indeed, and they may nit pick about the origin of some of the voters, I believe that nearly as many genuine voters agreed with the petition but failed to sign. Either they felt that it was ‘a waste of time’ or didn’t have access to the internet. Especially the elderly who’s main gripe was the u turn on fuel allowance.
I am actually more concerned about what the Labour party left out of their manifesto. Scrapping the WFA was announced just 4 days after they took power - I don’t think anyone doubts that was their intention all along but they failed to mention it in any of their political broadcasts.
I thought for a minute that you were proposing to verify your claims … then I realised you were confirming that you were not going to do that. This also confirms that you did no checks before making your false claim. Which is a bit poor. And no correction afterwards either.
Meanwhile, this is an informed statement and identifies a key issue. Not only did they omit to mention something they doubtless intended to do anyway, they forgot to check how this would be received. They failed to prepare the ground work through opinion pieces about rich people buying cases of claret with their winter fuel allowance. Worse, much worse, they did not make efforts to inform pensioners who could quality for support - and encourage them to sign up for support so that their fuel allowance could continue. Poor effort all round.
But compare it to the last government which went through many changes of prime minister with no reference back to the public and definitely not something in any manifesto. That seems an even worse taking for granted or slight of hand than the Labour government has managed so far.
Hey, that’s out of order!
I have not “glossed over” anything. I have given unbiased actual figures and percentages of petitioners / registered voters for folk to draw their own conclusions – don’t shoot the Messenger! – it is not my fault if the actual figures do not fit in with your own biased narrative.
But your figures fail to mention the many disgruntled people who just didn’t sign the petition but agreed with it, so I take that as an attempt to discredit my comments by quoting figures and party affiliations based on somebody else’s estimates…which is basically what they are. However, the signatures on a petition are fact, over 3 million…
Surely they, and those that didn’t vote at the election, don’t count. If they can’t be bothered why are they counted? Same as people who whinge about their pollies but do absolutely nothing about it, not even just taking the simple task of writing to them - far more effective than signing an online petition.
Nice try! - but the only figures I quoted can be checked out from official sources (i.e. the U.K. population, the number of registered voters and the number of people signing up to the petition)
I did not quote any figures regarding party affiliates and I haven’t seen any figures of that kind - neither did I make any comment or estimate about how many people may be disgruntled but did not sign the petition - that would enter into the territory of guesswork!
I’ve never been an advocate of glossing over factual information to suit my own narrative.
