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BREXIT

Cancel Brexit petition heads towards SIX MILLION signatures

A petition set up last week that calls for the British government to cancel Brexit and stay in the EU by revoking Article 50 had garnered almost six million signatures on Wednesday.

Published: 27 March 2019 09:43 CET
Cancel Brexit petition heads towards SIX MILLION signatures
Photo: AFP

The online petition was set up on the parliament site shortly after Theresa May addressed the British public in a TV appearance in which she blamed MPs for the Brexit chaos.

By the next day it had rocketed past the one million signature mark and has kept on rising.

By Wednesday morning, thousands of people were still signing up to show their disapproval of the Prime Minister and their desire to remain part of the EU.

The total was at 5.83 million by 10am and was expected to pass the six million mark on Wednesday or Thursday.

According to officials at the House of Commons the petition had the highest rate of sign ups ever.

The petition was shared widely on British Facebook groups across the EU and thousands have signed from France, Germany and Spain.

The petition titled: 'Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU' reads: “The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is 'the will of the people'. We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now, for remaining in the EU. A People's Vote may not happen – so vote now.”

While the Conservative government has said it will not be cancelling Brexit or revoking Article 50 in order to respect the result of the 2016 referendum, parliament will hold a debate on the issue on Monday.

“Revoking Article 50, and thereby remaining in the European Union, would undermine both our democracy and the trust that millions of voters have placed in Government,” said the official statement.

The petition was started by Margaret Georgiadou, who says she has received death threats as a result.

Detractors claim it is full of false signatures, however officials have said that fake ones are being removed unless they can be verified via email.

British PM Theresa May was still holding out that her deal with the EU would get the backing of the British parliament in a third vote, but MPs were also set to cast votes on Wednesday on various other options.

Britain is set to leave the EU on April 12th unless May's deal is passed or the government can come up with a plan B to convince Brussels to accept a longer delay.

You can sign the petition here.

 

Member comments

  1. How many voted Leave? Oh, that’s right – 17,410,742.

    Yawn.

    Let’s not be Europeans – let’s respect a democratic vote. Brexit ASAP!!!

  2. If their servers were able to handle the traffic, there would likely be more than double, triple what we have now.

  4. The vote in 2016 was tainted by false information and in was margina. So I happily sign the petition. But somequestions: email checks. Can a husband and wife count as two on the same email address? Can people without email sign the petition if so how?

  5. Cut off in midstream. We must get to 8.5 million half the leave vote. Get to 10 million next.Then get past 17 million. It is possible ! Contact all your friends and encourage them to vote.Don’t let the cheats have their way.

  6. The true “undermining of democracy” was the lies, deceit and sheer BS that was used to get peple to vote ‘Leave’ in the referendum, and most of that from right-wing politicians!
    Now only the despots and desperate Brexiters repeat the ‘will-o-the-people’ mantra without any hint of reality on how this will adversely affect millions of people, now and in the future, not to mention the UK economy.

  7. “Lies and deceit”, right. And Hillary Clinton lost because Donald Trump colluded with Russia.

    Democracy means there are losers – that’s what Remainers are. Accept it, or just admit you are anti-democratic.

  8. WTH does Tr–p have to do with this? You MUST be desperate, Mrs. May.
    Your continued insults aimed at “Remainers” really helps your cause.

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For members

GIBRALTAR

Why has Gibraltar still not reached a Brexit deal with Spain?

With yet another round of Spain-UK negotiations set to begin more than eight years since the Brexit referendum, Gibraltar is still without a deal and a November deadline looms over any treaty. Why has it proven so hard to break the deadlock?

Published: 17 September 2024 13:38 CEST
Why has Gibraltar still not reached a Brexit deal with Spain?

On Thursday September 19th, Spain and the UK resume talks on Gibraltar’s post-Brexit status, and has been the case since 2016, uncertainty is still the prevailing feeling.

The British Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently received his Spanish counterpart, José Manuel Albares in London. Both did their diplomatic duties and talked up the prospects of a deal, with Lammy stating he hoped for an agreement that would ensure greater “prosperity and security for the people of Gibraltar.”

Albares, for his part, understandably centred any hypothetical deal on a “shared prosperity between Gibraltar and the 300,000 Andalusians connected every day in their normal lives”.

READ ALSO: Gibraltar demands Spain return stolen concrete block in new diplomatic spat

Though Lammy and Albares discussed the Rock, no formal negotiations or deal can be struck without EU oversight, so the meeting also included discussion of bilateral issues and international concerns such as the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

The meeting between the two Ministers was therefore a preamble to yet more formal treaty negotiations in Brussels on Thursday. Since Brexit came into effect at the end of 2020, Gibraltar has essentially existed in legal limbo with no formal treaty.

Border controls have been fudged ever since, leaving locals and Spaniards across the border faced with inconsistent rules and forcing travellers to find creative ways to bypass rules and get over ‘La Línea’. 

Why hasn’t a deal been reached?

So why all the meetings and pre-meetings and endless rounds of negotiations? How is it possible that Gibraltar is still without a Brexit deal all these years later?

A recent piece in El País by Rafa de Miguel, the daily’s UK and Ireland correspondent, perhaps put it best: “The amount of warm words in any political statement is inversely proportional to the progress in the negotiations.”

The reality is that, however many handshakes and photo opportunities and positive attitudes expressed between Spain and the UK on a bilateral level, these are ultimately irrelevant as nothing can be signed without the EU’s approval. 

This is further complicated by the fact that this makes any deal dependent on four way negotiations between Spain, the UK, the EU, and Gibraltar.

Each of these parties has their own individual set of needs, preferences and motivations. The EU won’t want to be seen to give Gibraltar, and by extension the UK, any special treatment for fear of emboldening other member states who desire bespoke arrangements when it comes to border controls and customs checks.

In light of Germany recently reimplementing land border checks, something some say is a direct violation of Schengen rules, this will be especially sensitive in these latest rounds of negotiations. 

Spain has long made territorial claims on Gibraltar dating back to the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, when the overseas territory was first ceded to the UK, and will want to come out of negotiations with something that can be perceived as a political victory, likely an increased Spanish role in border patrols.

Fabian Picardo, Gibraltar’s Chief Minister, has ruled this out definitively over the last few years, citing concerns about British sovereignty.

The UK government in London will also have worries about British sovereignty, but will balance this with the knowledge that Gibraltar negotiations are also an opportunity to reset relations with Europe more widely, something the new Starmer government has repeatedly stated since coming into power.

READ ALSO: ‘It’s time to reset Britain’s relations with Europe’, says UK foreign secretary

Some reports, however, suggest that despite the positive musings coming from London, negotiations have stalled and that Lammy has no intention of signing anything that would deviate from Gibraltar’s needs and concerns.

Political tensions were increased recently when Gibraltar demanded Spanish far-right party Vox return a concrete block stolen from British waters, and the Euro 2024 winning Spanish football team made international headlines when it celebrating by singing ‘Gibraltar es Español’ (Gibraltar is Spanish).

READ ALSO: ‘Gibraltar is Spanish!’: How Spain celebrated Euro 2024 heroes

Despite wanting to improve relations with the EU, Lammy is expected to reiterate the Labour government’s unwavering commitment to the “double lock” on sovereignty, sources told El País.

Perhaps most pressingly, however, is the fact that these new negotiations now have a deadline: the enforcement of new Schengen Area border rules come into force on November 10th and a treaty must be finalised before then. 

READ MORE: Hard border? What we know so far about new Gibraltar-Spain checks

Schengen Zone rules mean that there are two major outstanding points in treaty negotiations: firstly, the sore point of Spanish border guards on British soil, something Gibraltar rejects outright, and also the question of who would run Gibraltar’s airport, which is located on the isthmus between Spain and the British territory, an area Madrid claims was never included in Treaty of Utrecht.

The most contested aspect of negotiations is Madrid’s demand that Spanish agents should be allowed to carry out checks on passengers arriving at Gibraltar airport and that they should be armed and in uniform.

For many Llanitos (Gibraltar locals) this is an intolerable idea and one Picardo rejects outright: “There will be no Spanish boots on the ground,” he has said repeatedly.

On the other hand, Spain argues that no specific protocol can be designed for Gibraltar and that if it wants to join the border-free European area, it must accept Schengen rules.

Spanish boots on British soil is a particularly visceral point for many Gibraltarians of a certain age. In June 1969, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco closed the border gate between Gibraltar and La Línea de la Concepción, cutting the tiny overseas territory off from the world, separating Spanish-British families and forcing Gibraltar to source food from elsewhere on the planet. 

It was eventually reopened in December in 1982 but those 13 years have taken deep root in Gibraltar’s historical memory and is now embedded into the Llanito collective imagination and identity.

For many on ‘The Rock’, the idea of Spanish border guards on British soil, whether it be in the airport or elsewhere, is simply unacceptable under any circumstances. 

Tax could also prove to be a sticking point. Gibraltar has no VAT, but Madrid has argued that if it wants to benefit from fluid border movement, its tax rules must be brought into line with EU rules.

Of course, there’s also both the domestic and international geopolitical contexts to consider here too. All parties – Spain, the UK, Gibraltar and the EU – have been distracted by other events in recent years.

Spain has been preoccupied by political tension, snap elections and the Catalan amnesty, while Britain suffered the almost cartoonish political instability of the outgoing Conservative government and treaty talks were postponed after the general election in July.

Added to this is the fact that the mediating party, the EU, has had its hands full with the war in Ukraine and surging far-right parties across member states, a trend that interestingly both the UK and Spain buck as the only major European states with centre-left governments.

Talks resume on Thursday September 19th, over 8 years since the Brexit referendum.

In British politics, the UK’s exit from the EU now seems strangely absent from debate, as though the issue is over and the country has finally begun to move on — but for Gibraltarians and the thousands of Spaniards who cross the border and work there everyday, Brexit is still an open-ended question.

READ ALSO: ‘Starting now’: New UK govt wastes no time in Gibraltar post-Brexit talks with Spain

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