Keir Starmer only arrived in Downing St in July but more than three million people want an election (Image: Getty)
The pub owner whose petition calling for a general election has won more than three million signatures says politicians have got a “kick up the backside”.
On Monday MPs will debate Michael Westwood’s call for the country to go to the polls just six months after the summer election which installed Sir as prime minister.
Mr Westwood’s petition states he wants a new election because Labour has “gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election”.
In some constituencies more than eight per cent of people have signed the petition.
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Mr Westwood, whose pubs include the Waggon and Horses in Oldbury, does not expect Monday’s Westminster Hall debate to lead to a re-run of the election but he said the petition has “given politicians in general a kick up the backside”. He says it was an opportunity for people who are “sick of being lied to by this government or previous governments” to come together and try and make a change.
Describing the message he believes the three million signatories have sent to elected representatives, he said: “Do you know what, if you keep upsetting the public they are going to raise their voice and try to be heard.”
He is unimpressed that Labour was able to win 412 of the UK’s 650 constituencies on 34 per cent of the vote and wants to change the electoral system.
However, he has no plans to stand for election himself.
He said: “What I’d like to do is try and make a change to the system and where that leads to, who knows?”
In the meantime, he is concerned that Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s decision to hike up employers’ National Insurance Contributions will make like harder in the pub industry.
“It’s only going to get worse,” he said.
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Politicians from Opposition parties are in no doubt why the petition has struck such a chord.
Conservative MP Peter Bedford said: “It is clear from the millions of signatories to this petition that the public, just months after a general election, have buyers’ remorse. Their promise, before the general election, not to raise taxes has been shown to be totally bogus; and the public are understandably enraged.”
MP Kirsty Blackman said: “The Labour Government has had a disastrous first six months in power with Sir breaking promise after promise to the electorate – it’s no wonder voters are furious.
“Despite promising ‘change’ during the election campaign, instead Sir robbed pensioners of their , maintained the two-child cap, betrayed the Waspi women and let energy bills soar even higher.
“The Labour party simply picked up where the left off and it’s no surprise to see their support plummeting.”
The Government insists it was elected on a “mandate of change,” stating it “inherited unprecedented challenges, with crumbling public services and crippled public finances” but pledging to “deliver a decade of national renewal”.