Agencies
London, June 25: Over a million people have signed a petition in the UK calling for a second referendum over the country’s EU membership following the shock Brexit vote.
The petition will now have to be discussed in the British Parliament, having crossed 100,000 signatures required to trigger a debate in the House of Commons. The petition till now has garnered 1,274,321 signatures and the number is constantly rising.
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 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 they 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 were 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.
Corbyn faces post-Brexit ‘coup’
London: Britain’s Opposition Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn is facing a ‘coup’ from within his party for not campaigning strongly enough to prevent the country’s exit from the European Union (EU). Two Labour MPs submitted a motion of no confidence in the leader after the referendum results showed Britain had voted in favour of leaving the EU, saying he did not convey a clear message. Labour MPs Dame Margaret Hodge and Ann Coffey submitted a motion of no confidence against Corbyn to Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) chairman John Cryer.
UK’s EU Commissioner quits
London: Britain’s most senior diplomat to the European Union, Jonathan Hill, Saturday announced he will step down from the position saying “what is done cannot be undone”, a day after his country decided to leave the 28-member bloc. Hill said he did not believe it was right for him to carry on with his work as the UK’s European Commissioner – in charge of financial services at the European Commission. “I wanted it to end differently and had hoped that Britain would want to play a role in arguing for an outward-looking, flexible, competitive, free trade Europe. But the British people took a different decision, and that is the way that democracy works,” the Conservative party peer and a close aide of David Cameron said in a statement.
Scotland seeks immediate EU talks
Edinburgh: Scotland wants immediate talks with the European Union on protecting its place in the bloc, after Britain’s vote to leave the EU, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Saturday. Speaking after an emergency meeting of her cabinet, Sturgeon said it had agreed to seek “immediate discussions with the EU institutions and other EU member states to explore all possible options to protect Scotland’s place in the EU.” The UK as a whole voted by 52 per cent to 48 per cent to leave the EU in Thursday’s historic referendum. But Scotland voted strongly for Britain to remain — by 62 per cent to 38 per cent.
Brexit big blow to UK science
London: Top British scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have reacted with dismay to the country’s decision to leave the European Union, which hands them nearly one billion pound a year for research, terming the result a “big blow” for hiring talented people. The EU sends to their laboratories some of the most brilliant minds in the world, scientists said. Paul Boyle, vice-chancellor of Leicester University, called the “shocking result” a “dark day for UK science” and requested for every effort to be made to counter any feeling that the UK had become less welcoming to international researchers. According to a May report by the UK data group Digital Science, scientific research in Britain was supported by the EU funding to a “concerning level.” Pro-European science minister Jo Johnson made it clear there was no guarantee that a post-Brexit government would be willing or able to make up any shortfall if the EU funds collapsed, ‘the Guardian’ reported.