"Gordon Brown resign" petition now in all time top 10

A notable milestone has just been passed by the "Please go" petition on the No 10 website. It has just gone into the top 10 for all petitions (both open and closed) on the site. I am sure Gordon Brown's staff will be aware of this.

Interest in the petition has waned since its heady first few weeks when the number of people signing it rocketed up. I wonder if a further wobble by the Labour party around its conference in early October could see renewed interest. If wavering Labour MPs who deep down know it is all over for Brown need their spines stiffening perhaps they should take a look at the 70,677 people who have signed it so far. We all know that a petition like this represents many more people than the ones who have signed it.

If you haven't added your name yet then you have until the 22nd October to do so. Go on. It's in a good cause.

"Gordon Brown resign" petition - 60,000 and counting

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown aint getting any better and the "Please go" petition on the No 10 website has passed 60,000 signatures today.

In fact if anything, Brown's dithering and indecisiveness about the whole expenses debacle and even his unwillingness to take a lead in the dire situation Michael Martin finds himself (Nick Robinson reported today on his blog that he thinks Martin would have had a nod and a wink from Brown that he could carry on fighting - terrible misjudgement) it just shows how out of touch he is.

I am sure a better PM would have got a grip of this much sooner. So, all the more reason if you have not already done so to go and sign it. The next target to aim for is probably 70,664 when it will enter the top 10 of all petitions the No 10 site has ever had (it is currently 14th).

"Gordon Brown resign" petition is still there

With all the other stuff going on at the moment about MP's expenses, it seems to have slipped off the media's agenda but the "Please Go" petition asking Gordon Brown to resign is still there on the Downing Street petitions website. At the time of writing, the numbers have just gone past 56,000 which is almost double the next largest one.

Brown is still an awful Prime Minister with no democratic legitimacy and if like me you think the time has come for him to go, please go and sign the petition.

There have been some suspicions that not all the signatures are being added and the rate of increase tapered off rather oddly, just as the media coverage was ramping up a week or so ago. I posted about it here last week. If you have problems relating to this, please contact Kalvis Jansons the petition's creator via this Google group.

"Gordon Brown resign" petition - Tory asks him about it at PMQs

A Tory backbencher, Andrew Rosindell asked Gordon Brown about the "Please Go" petition at Prime Minister's Questions today in the House of Commons. He pointed out that the number of signatures on the list are now more than twice the number of votes he got in his constituency at the last general election (which as I have posted about previously when the signatures passed this number is his only democratic mandate at all, as an MP for Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath).

Brown's response was to bat this question away by claiming that Mr Rosindell should be "ashamed" for not asking about policy.

I can assure Mr Brown that people like myself who have signed this petition and want him to go are not ashamed of doing this, or having our representatives in parliament bring it up like this. I am however ashamed that our Prime Minister has no democratic mandate to lead this country, is politcally tone deaf, has completely ballsed up our economy and yet has not accepted any responsibility for this. At all.

If you disagree with Gordon's analysis and think it is time he went then go to the petition and add your name to the 50,000+ people who have already done so in the last 2 weeks.

"Gordon Brown resign" petition - 50,000 and counting

The "Please go" petition on the No 10 website has just passed 50,000 this morning.

The rate of increase has slowed down in the last few days which I have posted about previously wondering why that might be but it is still by far and away the most rapidly growing petition on the site. As far as I am aware there has as of yet been no response from No 10.

It looks like the 50,000 are not the only ones who want to get rid of Brown. Even members of his own cabinet are now criticising him in about as blatant a way as possible without actually resigning. The decision as to whether or not he resigns could soon be taken out of his hands, but I hope that people still sign the petition to keep the pressure up.

"Gordon Brown resign" petition - Next Stop, All Time Top 10!

The "Gordon Brown resign" petition is now at around 46,000 signatures and is already No 1 of the active petitions. However if it can get more than 70,663 then it will enter the Top 10 of all the petitions they have ever had since the site was first created a few years ago under Tony Blair.

Hopefully that target can be achieved in the next few days.

Also, the petition creator now has a Google Group for discussion about the petition here: Brown "please go" petition HQ.

"Gordon Brown resign" petition. Suspicious rate of increase?

I have been following with interest and posting about the "Please Go" petition on the Number 10 petitions website that asks Gordon Brown to resign. I have posted about it several times now.

Kalvis Jansons, the person who started the petition now has a dedicated Google Group to support the petition.

He also posted the following on another thread on my blog which I am happy to reproduce here:

This is a 6 month petition, rather than the more normal 12 month. So, it is harder to break the record for the largest petition ever on Number 10. However, we effective blogging and the very early article in http://theregister.co.uk with title "Go, Brown, Go!", we were off to a fast start. I am working on increasing the rate of growth in the near future, and others are doing it in their way as well.

So, we are still in with a good chance of making this break all the Number 10 petition records. Your blog also helps in this, so keep up the good work.

Others seeing this can help, if they have digg.com accounts, by digging anything on the "Please go" petition on digg. We will reach some new people when we get on the digg.com front page, which should be soon, with a little help.

Also, we have not been on the 10:00 TV news yet. This will provide a big boost, and I am working on that, though any help would be welcome. Note, I am not trying to get on the TV, I want the story and URL mentioned on the TV.

Anyone with ideas, please post them on 10.kalvis.comThis is better than emailing me, as many others are helping and I can direct them to that site as well. Again this will speed things up a bit.

He has mentioned on his groups page that he would like to get to 2,000,000 before the petition runs out on the 22nd October (after 6 months) which would make it the largest petition to site had ever received. He has calculated that we will need an average of 11,000 signatures per day added in order to get this.

However, I am getting a little bit suspicious about the rate of increase. Since I started following the petition a week ago when it was at about 700 the rate of increase seems to have been pretty constant at about 6,000 per day. This is despite the fact that at first there was very little publicity and in the last 2 or 3 days there have been various mentions in newspapers and even on TV. I am confused as to how the rate of increase can be so steady in the face of this.

Is the website capable of handling more than about 6,000 signatures per day? Has anybody noticed any problems in trying to register their signature? I would be interested to know if there is a reason for this. Perhaps it is just a coincidence. It will be interesting to see if the rate goes up as the publicity it will get from the weekend and especially Sunday papers should surely cause a big spike? I will be happy to be proved wrong on my suspicions here and I will be watching the site closely!

UPDATE: Yesterday the growth was only about 3,000 which seems very odd given the exposure the petition had on national TV on Friday evening via the mention on "Have I Got News For You". There is a thread on Kalvis' Google Group for this too.

"Gordon Brown resign" petition. Now at the top!

The "Gordon Brown resign" petition has just reached the top of the chart with 28,454 signatures. Congratulations to Kalvis Jansons for getting there in just over a week!

It will be interesting to see how Number 10 responds to this now. They surely cannot completely ignore it. I know they can claim that some of the signatures will be spurious but I bet the vast majority are from real people and it reflects a strong feeling within the country that the man is a disaster and he should go.

There was talk within the blogosphere earlier today that David Cameron might bring this subject up during PMQs. I had hoped he might but he did not and the more I have thought about it, the more unlikely this seemed. Brown could have plucked a few of the obviously spurious names from the list that had made it through the vetting to make Cameron seem silly. Also, Cameron is probably thinking that assuming he becomes PM himself, after 6 months or a year of tough decisions when he is unpopular, a similar petition against him could be started and he could then find himself skewered with his own words from today.

But just because Cameron and others from within the political classes do not want to make the running on this does not mean that others such as political bloggers should not. Hopefully now it is at the top is should garner more media coverage and we can then get many more signatures. I think the next target should be 100,000 which should be achievable within the next couple of weeks if it is publicised widely enough.

"Gordon Brown resign" petition - numbers now exceed his votes at the last election

Unlike with Tony Blair, nobody outside of the constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath actually voted for Gordon Brown. Blair got 9.5 million votes as putative Prime Minister pledging to serve a full term in the 2005 General Election. Brown has no real mandate for anything because not only has he never faced the electorate in a General Election but uniquely among modern Prime Ministers he hasn't even faced an election within his own party giving him even less legitimacy.

The number of people who voted for Gordon Brown in his constituency in 2005 was 24,278.

The number of people who have put their name to the petition for him to resign on the Number 10 petitions website has just passed this mark and is now at 24,325:


More people have now officially registered that they wish him to go than elected him MP in the first place.

There are only a few thousand more votes to go before it becomes the top petition on the site.

UPDATE: It is now at the top!

"Gordon Brown resign" petition - numbers may go down as well as up!?

I have been keeping an eye on the "Gordon Brown resign" petition on the Number 10 petitions site today and I noticed something a bit odd. at around 15:30, the number was at 6,828 but half an hour later the number was at 6,825. Only 30 seconds or so after I saw the reduced number I had another look and it had then gone up to 6,916. I have the browser instances open separately although there are no timestamps for them.

Now I am not sure what this means. I cannot see a facility for signatories to remove their name. Is it possible that administrators are removing signatories from this? If so, for what reason? If they are removing names in the hope that they can reduce the size of this then they are playing a dangerous game as if that were to be the case it would definitely become extremely newsworthy.

I should make clear I do not know the cause of this anomaly and there may be an innocent explanation. It does seem odd though and I would be interested if anybody out there could shed any light on this.

I have also noticed some of the commenters on Guido's latest thread about this have also noticed the numbers going down at various points.