Truth behind common election petition as identities behind signatures debunked

A petition calling for a general election has amassed more than 2.5 million signatures – but thousands of those who have signed aren’t living in the UK.

In fact the petition has been signed by people based across a whopping 184 countries, from the British Antarctic Territory to China to the United Arab Emirates. A surge in people signing is attributed to tech billionaire Elon Musk having shared the petition on X/ Twitter, after which the number of signatories more than doubled from one million on Sunday evening to over two million by Monday lunchtime.

Only British citizens or UK residents have the right to sign the petition, which calls for another general election fewer than four months after having one. But a surprising number of Brits from around the world are calling for a chance to go back to the polls. Behind the UK, Australia has the most people who have signed the petition at almost 3,000. In Spain, some 2,018 people have signed and around 1,500 have signed in the US. More than 1,000 people in France and Canada have also put their name on the petition. Even nine people have signed in the British Antarctic Territory.

Musk, who is set to serve as the government’s efficiency tsar in Donald Trump’s administration, has previously clashed with Keir Starmer over claims of “two-tier policing” in the UK amid swirling conspiracy theories that police treat white far-right rioters more harshly than ethnic minority groups. The Tesla boss was accused of stoking tensions during the summer’s riots after he claimed that civil war was “inevitable” in the UK.

On Sunday Musk shared a tweet of the general election petition and wrote: “The people of Britain have had enough of a tyrannical police state.” The post has so far been viewed 34.4 million times. Musk is said to have ordered X/Twitter’s algorithms to be changed when he took over the social media platform so that his own posts would be amplified.

Reform UK leader and Trump ally Nigel Farage also shared the petition. His post was seen 6.2 million times, with the MP saying: “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Peter Jukes, co-founder of Byline Times, responded with a petition calling for Brexit to be reversed that had gained 6.1 million signatures at the time.

Gaining a lot of signatures does not mean the demands called for in a petition will be met. Parliament considers all petitions that get more than 100,000 signatures for a debate.

Keir Starmer on Monday rejected the demands of the petition and said he was “not surprised” that some people who did not support Labour in July’s election might want a second poll. The PM told ITV’s This Morning: “Look, I remind myself that very many people didn’t vote Labour at the last election. I’m not surprised that many of them want a rerun. That isn’t how our system works. There will be plenty of people who didn’t want us in the first place. So, what my focus is on is the decisions that I have to make every day.”