I’m not going to lie: it scares me that three million of my fellow citizens would sign a petition calling for the cancellation of the largest democratic vote in UK history. Just a year after we celebrated the hundredth anniversary of working-class men and some women getting the vote, there is now a serious effort to overthrow something that was voted for by eight million women and millions of working-class people: Brexit. ‘Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU’, says the three-million-strong petition on the parliament website. This is an explicit cry to defy the public, to thwart democracy, to disenfranchise once more those people who were enfranchised 100 years ago. It is a petition against the people.

Many Brexiteers are pointing out that people who aren’t resident in the UK have signed the petition, which is not allowed on parliamentary petitions. Others are wondering if some people might have found a way to sign twice. Some say it’s just an online petition and therefore it carries no serious weight, certainly in comparison with an actual vote. This criticism is certainly true. Three million people clicking some buttons on their phones is nothing in comparison with 17.4million people traipsing to polling stations, patiently waiting in line, and weathering the insults and threats of virtually the entire establishment in order to vote for Brexit. The former is an expression of virtual anger (and there’s nothing wrong with that: I have signed many online petitions) while the latter was a real-world, flesh-and-blood statement of democratic intent. Anyone who thinks this petition does anything whatsoever to weaken the vote for Brexit is living in cloud cuckoo land. And yet, despite all these arguments, we have to reckon with the incredibly discomfiting fact that a significant number of people in the UK would like to see democracy overthrown. Make no mistake: that’s what we’re dealing with here. ‘The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is “the will of the people”. We need to put a stop to this claim’, the petition says. It calls on the government to revoke Article 50 and simply ‘remain in the EU’. Three million people have signed this. Three million. They have signed a petition that mocks the people’s will and calls on the government to override it. This is an invitation to tyranny. It is a plea with the government to rule by diktat rather than by democratic consent. It is chilling that so many Britons, so many of our fellow citizens, would petition for the destruction of democratic rights that our forebears fought and died for.