The petition is the largest of its kind to date, with over 600,000 signees in 24 hours.
Petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/241584
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digit...
[1] https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2016/08/16/scaling-the-petiti...
Just like they do for the Article 13 protests, it's all orchestrated by Facebook, Google etc. What can you do when your own politicians are the equivalent of 911-truthers?
The website said "Any petition that reaches 100k signatures will be debated in parliment", and the "repeal the snoopers charter" petition hit 100k within a day or two of opening and kept going up.
The parliament responded by updating the wording on the website to say "any petition that hits 100k will be /considered/ for debate in parliament" and then released a statement saying "we've considered it, but we've already passed it so no".
I've never heard of a petition on a topic of any substance on one of these petition websites achieving anything. It's a PR stunt, the British public should consider blockading the entrance to all british airports with those trucks that are going to be stuck at the border instead.
Even though only a rather small minority of citizen has any interest in the topic, they have been effective in putting it on the public agenda. They organized (completely peaceful) protests. Journalists then covered those protests, even though their publishers' economic interests are probably on the other side.
The EU parliament, often decried as undemocratic, has taken a lot of interest. Opinion is now split, often within parties and groups. It rejected an attempt to hold the vote early and bypass the large protests scheduled for Saturday.
It's anyones' guess how this will end. While some of the statements, such as claims that protest emails are fake "bots" are obviously uninformed, I am similarly disappointed by the other side not recognizing some legitimate interests of creators and maybe trying to advance constructive ideas.
Edit: It is already being raised in parliament by opposition MPs https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1108708533019832323
It's not a "petition to cancel Brexit" it's a "petition to consider debating the idea of cancelling Brexit". i.e. 1) it doesn't necessarily happen (and often doesn't) even if the threshold is passed; 2) if it is, it is _debated_ - that doesn't necessarily (and probably doesn't, at least as a direct result) mean that whatever the petitioners want is actioned.
The inverse argument - various petitions with a theme of 'leave in March' - was debated in January, here's the transcript: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2019-01-14/debates/694...
Note it's a debate in a small committee room between people that the average (even politically interested) Briton has never heard of, minor backbenchers, it's certainly not a well-attended row in the Commons Chamber of the kind you see clipped on television.
And why should it be? MPs are already debating Brexit options, there's no need to petition them to do so.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/223729
I suspect that the government are going to to ignore the current one.
The debate around 223729 made the very important point that in the case of illegal campaigning in elections, the Electoral Commission can void the result. The electorate would probably expect that the same would be true of a referendum, but the only sanctions available are some paltry fines.
[0] https://twitter.com/pixeltrix/status/1108673644660699136
I am wondering what the issue is, both in why it is failing on relatively low traffic numbers and also why it is they are struggling to fix it for over 3 hours at this point.
17,410,742 for. 16,141,241 against. 750k and counting. Time is not on your side amigo.
I'm not trying to downplay the significance of the petition or its size, but I don't believe math works that way.
Why there hasn’t been a counter pro-brexit petition yet I have no idea. Those numbers would be higher purely on the zealotry.
2) Why would there need to be a pro-brexit petition if brexit won the vote? That is unless cancelling brexit suddenly becomes the way that decision-makers want to go for (and note that there are pro hard brexit petitions)
Disclaimer: I do not reside in the UK, and I no longer click on every article in the ever-flowing torrent of brexit-related news, so my knowledge of the ongoings may be outdated
If the issue has already been debated recently, the Petitions Committee may decide not to put a petition forward –– and one might argue that this petition has already been debated in parliament.
This particular [petition] case is already active in the UK court, which means the petition does not meet the required standard to be considered.
"Let's leave with no deal. To do this, we'll need a deal."
Do they want a deal or not?
Sadly, though, this says more about the infrastructure of the petitions website, than it does the will of the people.
The second part of your statement though, is completely fair
Seems a lot more impressive than "around half of voters".
Why the editorialized title?