Brown outlasts resignation petition
Friday, 23 October 2009 12:00 AM
By politics.co.uk staff
The petition on the Downing Street website calling for Gordon Brown to resign was taken down last night.
It had attracted 72,000 signatures in its six months on the site before being taken down.
The petition was launched in April by Kalvis Jansons, a former Labour supporter, who simply proposed: ''We the undersigned petition the prime minister to resign."
At one stage it appeared the prime minister might be forced from office before the petition drew to a close. But he used a last-minute reshuffle in May to keep his grasp on Downing Street.
Reuters news agency said he wanted the petition to be a "focus of people's anger, for him to know how people feel".
The No 10 epetitions were set up as a way of improving public engagement in politics.
The biggest have had a major impact - one on road pricing in 2007 attracted over 1.8 million signatures.
Following its removal from the site the biggest petition now calls on the prime minister to rethink the government's childcare vouchers scheme. It has already attracted over 53,000 signatures and will run until September 29th 2010.
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