Two million sign petition demanding Brexit result is overturned

A PETITION demanding a second EU referendum has gained what is believed to be the largest level of support in parliamentary history.

More than two million people signed a motion for Thursday’s result to be discarded because the vote for Leave was less than 60 per cent and the turnout less than 75 per cent.

Parliament’s website went down under the volume of Remain supporters signing the petition, put forward by William Oliver Healey, as it easily passed the 100,000 signature threshold at which MPs have to consider it for debate.

Despite the weight of support, the leading constitutionalist Vernon Bogdanor, who tutored David Cameron at Oxford, warned that the chances of a second vote were “highly unlikely”.

Professor John Curtice, whose exit poll was the only one to predict the Conservatives would win last year’s general election, said the European question was so divisive within mainstream political parties that it would be unlikely to form a campaigning issue for some time, let alone prompt another public vote.

He said the number of people who had signed the petition was “chicken feed” against the 17 million who voted in favour of Leave.

“It’s no good people signing the petition now, they should have done it before,” he said. “It has passed the 100,000 mark for it to be debated in Parliament. All that means is that some MPs will say, ‘It’s a terrible shame,’ or others will say, ‘Hallelujah’. Then that’s an end of it.”

The anti-Brexit backlash has seen two days of demonstrations in London, Edinburgh and Glasgow, culminating yesterday in a protest outside Parliament.

More than 30,000 people have signalled their intention to attend a further rally in Trafalgar Square on Tuesday. The marches have attracted significant numbers of young people who say the vote “robbed” them of their futures inside the EU.