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Surge in support for petition to revoke Brexit
LONDON, March 21, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – An online petition asking the British
government to revoke Brexit briefly crashed on Thursday after a surge in
support saw it garner more than 600,000 signatures in less than 24 hours.
With just eight days to go until Britain is scheduled to leave the
European Union, the petition launched on Wednesday admitted that a second
referendum “may not happen — so vote now”.
“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,” the petition read.
A House of Commons spokesman said the technical difficulties on the
website for the petition were caused by “a large and sustained load on the
system”.
The petition was started by Margaret Anne Georgiadou, who told the BBC:
“It’s almost like a dam bursting.
“It’s now or never for a lot of people,” she said.
Britain’s parliament will be able to vote next week on a range of
preferred courses of action for the government to take if MPs reject for a
third time a divorce deal negotiated by Prime Minister Theresa May.
One of those options could be to revoke Article 50 — the formal procedure
under which Britain is negotiating to leave the bloc after 46 years of
membership.
Parliament last week voted against holding a second referendum after the
main opposition Labour Party, which has been highly ambivalent on the issue,
abstained.
Georgiadou, who voted to stay in the EU in the 2016 referendum, said
Remainers like her had been “silenced and ignored” since that vote.
“In a democracy, everyone’s included. In a referendum, the losers have no
voice. I was annoyed about that,” she said.
BSS/AFP/ARS/1647 hrs