In 2011, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition relaunched the e-petitions system, originally introduced by Tony Blair, bringing in the rule that petitions reaching 100,000 signatures would be considered for a debate in Parliament.
The introduction of the threshold was met with a mix of cautious praise, political resistance and scepticism. Some Labour MPs were concerned it would only mean a debate would be considered rather than guaranteed; other Labour MPs fretted that it would produce “crazy ideas”.
In 2008, many noted, an early and particularly witless e-petition on the official Downing Street website had gained nearly 50,000 signatures asking for Gordon Brown to step aside for Jeremy Clarkson (“Jezza is legend [sic] and deserves a chance to run the country”). No 10 responded with a satirical viral video featuring a portrait of Clarkson, in a harbinger of how all politics would be conducted 18 years later.
But still others saw opportunities. The Daily Express, for example – then still a paper of some, if waning, influence – was first off the blocks, urging its readers to sign an e-petition calling for Britain to leave the EU and boasting it had 65,000 signed up before it even launched.
The system, unlike much else from 2011, is still in place. And yet this week, when a petition (we don’t call them e-petitions any more, m’lud) calling for Britain to join the EU hit the requisite target and triggered an actual debate in Parliament, how much coverage did it get, even from that media for whom Brexit is their lodestar? Nix. Nada. None.
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And how many MPs from Reform and the Conservatives, the two parties (even if the first was in various guises) who so championed the cause of withdrawal, took part? One from the former, two from the latter – and one of those was forced to in his role as opposition spokesman. Nigel Farage, you will be flabbergasted to learn, could not be arsed to turn up and make his case.
Robert McMaster from Reading, the man who launched the petition which finally won 111,687 signatures, was in the visitor’s gallery in Westminster Hall to witness condemnation after condemnation of the fateful 2016 decision, calls to reverse it and only the most piffling of defences of the status quo.
As Tony Vaughan, the Labour MP who moved the debate, said: “In whose interest was Brexit? It was certainly in the interest of countries such as Russia that want to see Britain’s influence weakened and Europe fractured. With Brexit, that is what they got.
“With Russia doing everything it can to provoke further division and war in Europe, this petition is a good opportunity to ask ourselves not just whether we should rejoin the EU, but the much bigger questions of what relationship we want with Europe, why, and how we get there.”
Other MPs queued up to point out the impacts of Brexit, from Labour’s Deidre Costigan (“Many of my constituents voted to leave the EU because they were bombarded with lies”) and Stella Creasy (“We need to take the Brexit blinkers off and look to our future”) to the Lib Dems’ Layla Moran (“Workers as well as owners are seeing what has happened to their jobs after that disastrous deal”).
But where were the Brexit defenders? Where were the arguments against joining? The only Conservative MP to take part of his own volition was Bernard Jenkin, an exciting young fresh face who was one of the Maastricht rebels under John Major.
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Meanwhile, in the absence of Farage, Richard Tice, Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman and every other ‘senior’ Reform figure, it was left to oddball Danny Kruger, another former Tory defector, to make the case for the only reason his party really exists.
“I congratulate the petitioners, but I am afraid the heart sinks in this debate,” he told MPs. “I think it took less than three minutes before we heard about the 350 million quid on the side of the bus, which is one of the great canards. Of course, that was paid; one of the few things that Theresa May actually did for Brexit was make that very significant increase in the NHS budget.”
Which is sort of true – two years after the referendum, May did announce a new five-year funding settlement for NHS England that increased its budget by an extra £384 million per week. But as both the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Office for Budget Responsibility pointed out at the time, as any savings from EU contributions were outweighed by Brexit’s negative impact on economic growth and tax revenues, the funding increase was actually financed through higher taxation and government borrowing rather than EU savings. Try again, Danny boy!
And that really was that. Responding officially for the Conservatives, Mike Wood, a shadow Cabinet Office minister, went through some of the old hits, but his heart wasn’t in it. He wondered “how many of the people who signed this petition did so in the eager anticipation of trading His Majesty the King on our banknotes for a fistful of euro cents” and pointed out that “70% of my constituents voted to leave in 2016”, as if Kingswinford and South Staffordshire was the whole of the UK and not a single one had changed their minds since.
It was a sorry performance from the Brexiteers, who once in effect ran Parliament like some kind of insane Victorian freakshow. Now they couldn’t even make it out of the bars for a debate that wrapped up at 6.57pm. Is that all they’ve got, or have they given up already?
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