Thr Leave campaign was not at all sure of winning the EU Referendum, and in May 2016, before the vote, one Leave supporter set up a petition on the government website calling for a re-run if certain conditions were not met, ironically by citing an EU regulation.
EU referendum Rules triggering a 2nd EU Referendum. We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule
that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based a turnout less
than 75% there should be another referendum.
Following the Leave campaign's narrow majority in the referendum, this was discovered by Remain voters and, since the wording made no mention of a link to the Leave campaign, decided to use it to register their anger and dismay. This became the most successful petition so far, with 3,604,489 votes registered on the 27 June (just 4 days after the 23 June vote) rising to 4,014,235 just two days later. On 9 July, with petition votes at 4,126, 424, the Goverment response was that there would be no re-run as the Referendum Act had received Royal Assent with no threshold or minumum turnout required (in retrospect a disastrous mistake).
As the petition continued to receive votes, a Parliamentary debate was scheduled for 5 September (sadly this was held in a small meeting room attended by a small number of MPs rather than a full debate by the House, and was only broadcast on Parliament TV not broadcast by BBC or ITV). The debate came to the same conclusion as the government response. At the time of the debate, votes had risen to 4,144,422 and though smaller numbers were voting each day, people continued to register their feelings about the result, so that when the petition closed on 25 November, a total of 4,150,259 people had supported the petition.
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