Following the controversial Brexit vote that shock not just Europe but the whole world, over one million people have signed a petition in the UK calling for a second referendum over the country’s EU membership.
The petition’s orgaziner James O’Malley have said in an interview that the capital was “a world city” and should “remain at the heart of Europe.”
The said petition will now have to be discussed in the British Parliament, having crossed 100,000 signatures required to trigger a debate in the House of Commons.
The UK voted to leave the EU by 52 to 48 per cent during the Thursday’s referendum but the majority of voters in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland backed the Remain side in a 72 per cent turnout.
This morning, the petition passed the million mark with most votes concentrated in London, Brighton, Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester.
The petition initiated by William Oliver Healey reads, “We the undersigned call upon Her Majesty’s Government to implement a rule that if the Remain or Leave vote is less than 60 per cent based a turnout less than 75 per cent there should be another referendum.”
Due to the hype made by the controversial petition, the website of the parliamentary at one point crashed due to the number of people adding their names to the call for another referendum.
At the moment, a second referendum in Scotland is now likely to commence after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said there had been a “significant change” to the circumstances of the original poll and that it should be back “on the table.”
A parallel petition on the other hand is calling for London mayor Sadiq Khan to declare ‘Londependence’, or the British capital an independent state, after the UK voted to quit the EU has also been signed by thousands of people.
Sixty per cent of Londoners had voted to remain in the EU, in stark contrast to other English cities like Birmingham and Coventry.
