When it comes to online petitions, facts should speak louder than clicks. Sadly, they don’t

Do we live in a ‘post-truth’, ‘post-factual’ political era? A small part of the answer has been provided by Welsh Assembly Member Mike Hedges, who said recently that ‘factual inaccuracies are a matter of opinion’. Oh dear. I’d say that is fairly clear evidence that at least in some corners of our political discourse, we are indeed post-factual. But what is even more worrying is the context in which Hedges made this extraordinary comment, because it marks the meeting of two new trends in our democracy: post factual politics, and the petition.

The rise of petitions as a factor in our public life is not an inherently bad thing. They certainly have value as a tool for concerned individuals to raise issues that they feel are important but are receiving scant government attention. But the problems arise when petitions are not started by individuals or communities, but by lobby groups – and it’s here that the collision with post-truth politics occurs.