Revealed: Thousands of people outside Britain signed pro-LEAVE petitions

Brexit & Foreign Policy Left Foot Forward

Attempts to discredit the 'Revoke Article 50 petition' are pure hypocrisy.

Leavers thought they had ‘gottcha’ moment on Thursday.

Right-wing blog Guido Fawkes spotted that some of the signatures on the Revoke Article 50 petition – which has now had over 2.6 million signatures came from outside the UK:

The only problem is – all the pro-Brexit petitions have many signatories from outside the UK.

More than 23,000 signatures are from outside Great Britain or unaccounted for on the pro-Brexitpetition ‘Leave the EU without a deal in March 2019’, from dozens of countries. It secured a government response and a debate in Parliament.

The foreign signatures range from 7 from Russia, 8 from Saudi Arabia to figures like 592 signatures from Spain (I think they Spaniards probably do want us out after the hash we’ve made of Brexit…):

Over 2,000 signatures are from outside GB or unaccounted for a separate – again pro-Brexit – petition titled: ‘Leave the EU immediately’. That includes 345 in Spain, 299 in France, 124 in Thailand, and 101 each in Germany & Ireland…

Some right-wingers were even calling for bots to flood the e-petitions site with fake signatures on the Revoke Article 50 petition – in an attempt to then discredit it. As Guido Fawkes tried and failed to do:

It’s not clear that the far-right of 4Chan followed through with these calls. But the simple fact is, some Brits sign petitions from abroad. Some people use ‘Virtual Private Networks’ to protect their privacy online, skewing the country they appear to come from. And a few non-Brits probably do slip through – the government’s e-petition site is not perfect.

But attacks on the Revoke Article 50 petition are cheap – at least 1.3m people with IP addresses within Great Britain have signed it, as of early Friday. That’s a huge movement for reversing the disastrous direction the government are taking.

Josiah Mortimer is Editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter.

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17 Responses to “Revealed: Thousands of people outside Britain signed pro-LEAVE petitions”

  1. James

    My girlfriend and I signed the petition while we were on holiday in Malaysia. I’m sure plenty of people who are expats or vacationing did the same. If I had to guess a number it probably wouldn’t be far off 4%. I suppose this guy believes Donald Trump’s “millions of illegal voters” theory as well…

  2. Fakey McNameface

    If you need temporary email addresses for this, you can get as many as you like at https://temp-mail.org/

  3. Patrick Newman

    Leave trolls grasping at straws. The numbers of signers outside the UK is tiny in comparison to the 5.5M who have signed and many of those are bone fide citizens outside the UK. This is in sharp contrast to the conduct of the Leave campaign and the claim by May of Russian interference in UK elections (Lord Mayor’s Banquet, Nov. 2017). This has never been followed up as it would be very inconvenient for the PM’s Brexit means Brexit basis of her premiership.

  4. Patrick Newman

    I can’t wait for the Leave supporters (200 allegedly marching to London as I write) to amass in London on Saturday in their hundreds of thousands! Currently, “Leave the EU without a deal in March 2019.” petition has less than 550,000 signatures or about 10% of the Revoke Article 50 petition!

  5. Onthethrees

    All this talk of “the will of the people” etc etc.
    Never forget, 37% of the voting population of the UK voted Leave, 35% voted Remain and the other 28% didn’t vote. That is NOT a ringing endorsement for anything. No wonder the MPs struggle to come up with a solution. The Referendum gave them no clear decision on “Brexit” , not even an agreed definition of what Brexit would look like.

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