Over 1 mn sign petition demanding second Brexit referendum in UK

The UK voted to leave the EU by 52 to 48 per cent in Thursday’s referendum but the majority of voters in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland backed the Remain side in a 72 per cent turnout.

The petition passed the million mark on Saturday morning, with votes most concentrated in London, Brighton, Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester.

The petition started by William Oliver Healey reads, “We the undersigned call upon Her Majesty’s Government to implement a rule that if the Remain or Leave vote is less than 60 per cent based a turnout less than 75 per cent there should be another referendum.”

The website of the parliamentary petition at one point crashed due to the number of people adding their names to the call for another referendum.

It remains unclear if a change to the rules demanded by the petition was to come into force and inserted into UK legislation, could be applied retrospectively.

After the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, the 45 per cent of voters who lost started a similar campaign for another vote.

A second referendum in Scotland is now likely after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said there had been a “significant change” to the circumstances of the original poll and that it should be back “on 

the table”.

A parallel petition calling for London mayor Sadiq Khan to declare ‘Londependence’, or the British capital an independent state, after the UK voted to quit the EU has also been signed by thousands of people.

The petition’s organiser James O’Malley, said the capital was “a world city” which should “remain at the heart of Europe”.An overwhelming 60 per cent of Londoners had voted to remain in the EU, in stark contrast to other English cities like Birmingham and Coventry.

Meanwhile, EU states have urged Britain to hold speedy talks on leaving the bloc after it voted to end its membership in a historic referendum.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said negotiations should begin as “soon as possible”. He made the comments after an urgent meeting of the six EU founder members to discuss the decision.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has said he will step down by October to allow his successor to conduct talks.

The six countries attending the summit in Berlin — Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands — first joined forces in the 1950s and still form the core of the EU.

“We say here together, this process should get under way as soon as possible so that we are not left in limbo but rather can concentrate on the future of Europe,” Steinmeier said.

His Dutch counterpart Bert Koenders said the continent could not accept a political vacuum, saying “this will not be business as usual”.

On negotiations, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: “It shouldn’t take forever, that’s right, but I would not fight for a short time frame.”

She added that she was seeking an “objective, good” climate in talks on Britain’s exit from the EU and that there was no need to make deterrence a priority.

Merkel also said there was “no need to be particularly nasty in any way in the negotiations; they must be conducted properly”.