It passed the threshold for a debate very quickly, and before that apology for a debate in Westminster Hall was grudgingly conceded, it became oversubscribed fifty times over. Signatures to the petition are still trickling in at several per hour. The tally will shortly reach 6.083 million. Since it does not close until 20th August, who knows what the final total will be? The results of the European Parliament elections may well inspire another spurt. I had hoped that another 75 residents of Bristol West would have signed by now, to bring up to three the number of constituencies where the supporters of the petition exceeded forty per cent of the electorate, but the numbers are pretty impressive all the same. Especially impressive are the 27,112 signatories (at the time of writing) in Europhobe Jeremy Corbyn's Islington North seat, representing 36.2% of the electorate there.
Channel 4's FactCheck team admitted that it was possible to fake signatures, but not on the industrial scale necessary to add millions to the register. The two-stage verification process would have militated against that. Besides, though the Cabinet Office is discreet about what verification processes are built-in to the system, clearly a flood of input from a single IP address would have been one alarm signal.
I hope that people continue to sign, so that parliament on its first sitting day after the 20th August will be presented with a colossal expression of the views of the silent majority, who want the opportunities and the protection of the EU to continue. Of course, it may not be necessary and the new prime minister, Boris Johnson, will perform one of his famous U-turns and take back the Article 50 letter. One lives in hope.
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