A petition to revoke Article 50 and prevent the UK from leaving the European Union crashed the UK government’s website on Thursday morning, after hundreds of thousands people swarmed to add their signatures.

The petition, which was posted on Wednesday night after PM Theresa May addressed the British public to criticize MPs for her requesting a delay to Brexit, was receiving 1,500 signatures every minute and had been signed by more than 600,000 before the site crashed.

As of midnight London time, the petition has attracted over 2 million signatures.

At around 9am a message appeared to state that the site was “down for maintenance” and asked users to “please try again later.” By 9.40am the site was up and running before crashing shortly afterwards.

The rate of signing is the highest the site has ever had to deal with and we have had to make some changes to ensure the site remains stable and open for signatures and new petitions. Thanks for bearing with us. — Petitions Committee (@HoCpetitions) March 21, 2019

The collapsing of the petition site was met with good humour on social media with satirical Twitter account Have I Got News for You, joking: “BREAKING: Theresa May finally succeeds in getting people to back something.”

BREAKING: Theresa May finally succeeds in getting people to back something. pic.twitter.com/Rr3aNZ2ohc — Have I Got News For You (@haveigotnews) March 21, 2019

Others urged people not to camp on the site to see the numbers go up, in order to prevent it from crashing multiple times.

If you've signed the Revoke Article 50 petition please resist the impulse to go back and check as it's helping to crash the site. Follow https://t.co/uFg5A224zl instead for regular updates Please retweet — John London (@johnlondon1) March 21, 2019

If you've already signed the Revoke Article 50 petition, it's probably worth resisting the urge to go back onto the site to check how many people have signed it since you're adding to the traffic that's causing the site to crash. 😊 — Chairman Meow #FBPE (@HandsomeSuperb) March 21, 2019

The petition calls on the government to revoke Article 50 and keep the UK in the EU, continuing: “The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is the will of the people. We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now for remaining in the EU. A people’s vote may not happen, so vote now.”

Déjà 1 million et demi de Britanniques ont voté la pétition réclamant au gouvernement de Theresa May de renoncer au #Brexit ! #UnionEuropéenne#UK#TheresaMaypic.twitter.com/qlL9OqaU91 — k-zey (@caze_romain) March 21, 2019

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