Why the general election petition matters

Does it matter that a petition calling for another general election has gone viral online and garnered more than two million signatures within a few days?

Conventional analysis would say not. After all, there are always a good few hundred thousand keyboard warriors who detest any government. Millions of bitter Remainers signed petitions calling for a second referendum to overturn Brexit for all the good that did them, as Sam Leith points out.

And yet it is the very artlessness of the way a man called Michael Westwood has set out his cause which tells me that his petition on the official parliamentary website does betoken something significant.

“I would like there to be another General Election. I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election,” the petition says.