A petition to remain in the EU has gone so viral it crashed a government website
UPDATE: March 21, 2019, 3:11 p.m. GMT The petition has since gained more than 1 million signatures. Per the government Petitions Committee, the "rate of signing" is the highest in the website has ever seen.
You might have heard, but things aren't exactly going smoothly in the run-up to Brexit. The exodus from the EU is slated to happen on March 29, which (*checks calendar*) is just days away.
A petition to remain in the EU and revoke Article 50 gained over 600K signatures before crashing the government petitions website.
As if Brexit wasn't already shambolic.
Article 50 is the legal mechanism by which countries can formally exit the European Union.
A House of Commons spokesperson confirmed in an email to Mashable that the website was experiencing difficulties due to a high volume of traffic.
"The petitions site is experiencing technical difficulties and we are working to get it running again urgently. It has been caused by a large and sustained load on the system."
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
The spokesperson later confirmed that the website is now working again.
At the time of publishing this article the petition has reached 630K signatures.
Celebrities like Game of Thrones star Daniel Portman (who plays Podrick) and Hugh Grant were calling on followers to add their signatures to the petition.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
After the site crashed, Twitter was ablaze with reactions, with many urging people to keep trying.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Topics Politics
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
