A growing wave of public dissatisfaction has sparked a petition demanding another general election in the UK, with over 200,000 people having signed it as of Friday, the Daily Mail reported.
Launched online on Wednesday, the petition has quickly gained momentum on social media.
Michael Westwood, who initiated the petition, accused the Labour government of breaking its campaign promises. “I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead-up to the last election,” the petition states.
The surge in signatures easily surpassed the 100,000 required for parliamentary consideration and a response by the government. According to official guidelines, petitions meeting this threshold are “almost always debated” in Parliament, although exceptions apply if the topic has already been addressed recently.
The petition’s rapid growth reflects mounting frustration following a series of controversial policy decisions from Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government since Labour won the general election in July.
Farmers recently staged street protests against new inheritance tax measures in the budget, and Starmer’s approval ratings have plummeted by 43 points since he took office in July.
The petition comes in a challenging period for Labour, which won the election by a landslide, but now faces diminishing public confidence. Observers attribute Starmer’s declining approval to what he calls “tough choices” on public spending.
The Labor Party inherited an economy with slow growth, public debt at its highest level since the early 1960s and a tax burden that is well on its way to hitting a near-80-year high.
In July, Britain’s new finance minister, Rachel Reeves, announced a sweeping 8.1 billion pounds of cuts for the next financial year and said that more measures would be taken in a full budget on Oct. 30.
Analysts suggest that the UK’s economic woes could be traced back to the rapidly declining productivity rate.
Since the 2007 economic crisis, the UK’s economy has struggled to bounce back. Gross Domestic Product per hour worked in the UK rose by an average of only 0.6% annually in the 2010s, far less than the 2.2% in the decade before the global economic crisis, according to estimates.