Those signing the general election petition should know better

Every now and again, a newspaper will run – and portentously headline – a survey on the future of the monarchy. There was a fashion, a few years back, for consulting the public on the question of whether the crown should skip a generation, so that Prince William could take over from his grandmother. The correct response to all such consultations was a heavingly contemptuous Alan Partridge shrug. The whole point of having a hereditary monarchy is that it’s hereditary and that the general public don’t get a say in the matter. If we want rid, it’ll take a bit more than a poll commissioned by the Sunday Times to do the trick.

Exactly the same response seems to me appropriate to the petition demanding an immediate general election that has appeared on the government’s petitions website. Just a few days after it launched, it has garnered more than 1.5