Swing seats back another election

For more than a decade, viral petitions demanding an immediate election were the preserve of Remainiacs and much of the Twitter left. So with Labour now in government, it is to no surprise then that it is now much of the right which is demanding another vote. A parliamentary petition to ‘call a general election’ has gone viral overnight, thanks to supportive posts by Elon Musk (who else?) among others. Numbers currently stand at more than 650,000 signatories: six times higher than the threshold of 100,000 required for a parliamentary debate. Wonder what the government response will be eh?

Such petitions rarely, if ever, succeed in their goal and those hoping to see Keir Starmer swept out of office will probably have to wait another four and a half years at least. But there is an interesting sub-plot to this petition with the number of signatures by constituency giving some flavour of the strength of feeling around the country. 

Mr S has done some digging and it turns out that at the top of the list there are a fair few 2024 swing seats where Labour made gains at the expense of the Conservatives. Newly-elected ‘Keirleaders’ who ought to be worried include David Smith, Kevin McKenna, Andy McNae and Josh Newbury. Their seats ranked 7th, 9th, 13th and 14th on the list of seats with most signatories on the aforementioned petition. 

If their voters are this disillusioned after 150 days, just think about how they’ll feel by 2029 eh?