A petition urging an immediate general election in the UK has now exceeded six million signatures.
This isn’t the case. A petition on the UK Government and Parliament website has just over three million signatures, but there is no live petition with six million signatures.
Claims that a petition calling for an immediate general election has more than six million signatures are circulating on social media.
The claim, which appears to have originated on TikTok, has also been shared on Facebook, where it has over 600 shares, as well as on Threads and X (Twitter).
The posts include an image of the Prime Minister Keir Starmer along with text saying: “A petition urging an immediate general election in the UK has now exceeded 6 million signatures.”
A description with one of the TikTok videos, which has been viewed more than 162,000 times, says: “A petition calling for an immediate general election in the UK has skyrocketed past 6 million signatures, reflecting the nation’s growing frustration with the current leadership.”
It adds that the petition is “hosted on the official Parliament website”.
But this isn’t true. There is no petition calling for a general election with this many signatures on the UK Government and Parliament petitions website. We also couldn’t find a petition of this magnitude calling for a general election on other petition websites, such as Change.org.
A search for “general election” on the Parliament website brings up a number of petitions.
The largest of these, titled ‘Call a General Election’ has been signed over three million times, and was debated by Parliament on 6 January and responded to by the government on 6 December 2024.
This is around half the amount claimed in the video being widely shared online.
The petition is still open to signatures, although it will close on 20 May, as all petitions on the site run for six months.
Last year Mr Starmer ruled out calling another general election in response to the petition, after it hit two million signatures.
Even when you combine the current three million signatures for this petition, with signatures on other live petitions on parliament’s website in relation to the circumstances triggering a general election or a change in the law to allow the public to vote for one, they do not add up to six million.
We previously debunked misinformation about the largest petition in November last year. when it was falsely claimed that the petition’s data showed that MPs had been signing it.
False claims such as these can undermine trust in democratic processes. Before sharing a claim on social media it’s important to consider whether what you are seeing is accurate, and the information provided is reliable.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as partly false because the petition calling for a general election has three million signatures, not six million as has been claimed.
Full Fact fights for good, reliable information in the media, online, and in politics.
Bad information ruins lives. It promotes hate, damages people’s health, and hurts democracy. You deserve better.