Downing Street website hosts petition calling for Gordon Bro

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Downing Street website hosts petition calling for Gordon Brown to resign

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Ten thousand people have signed a petition on the Downing Street website, calling for Gordon Brown's resignation

Monday, 27 April 2009
There have been many joyous postings on the Downing Street website in recent weeks to show the world that No 10 is a happy place.

Scores of pictures of the Downing Street garden in bloom have shown that staff are enjoying the wonders of spring. And of course there are lots of pictures of Gordon Brown holding earnest meetings with world leaders as he works hard to save the world economy.

But what is this? A suggestion has slipped on to the website that all may not be well beyond the iron gates of Downing Street. In fact there is a demand that the prime minister should be evicted.

By 7.00 last night nearly 10,000 people had signed a petition on the Downing Street website calling for the prime minister to resign. The petition, only posted five days ago, simply states: "We the undersigned petition the prime minister to resign".

The petition was posted by Dr Kalvis Jansons, an academic mathematician, who describes himself as a disillusioned "traditional Labour supporter". The "final straw", which persuaded him to post the petition, was the prime minister's initial reluctance to apologise for the emails by his former special adviser Damian McBride smearing the Tories.

Jansons, from Hitchin, Herts, who has taught at University College London, deliberately worded the petition in simple and brief terms to avoid it being blocked by No 10. In a message on the site, he wrote: "There are many reasons why we might want Brown to resign, but rather than having lots of narrow petitions on this topic (most of which have been rejected), I wanted one for all of us."

Jansons told the Press Association: "I wanted a simple, clear, generalised petition which would cover all the bases and comply with their rules. I wanted it to be something that could unite the country."

His aim was to make his petition the most popular on the site. A call for the RNLI to be protected from maritime radio licence fees is the most popular petition at the moment, with 28,000 signatures. Other petitions on the site call for an end to plans to part-privatise Royal Mail, preventing any increase in university tuition fees and opposing restrictions on vitamin supplements.

The prime minister will probably be cursing the internet whizz Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, Tony Blair's last director of strategy in No 10, who dreamt up the idea of hosting petitions as a way of connecting Downing Street to voters. He was branded a "prat" by the former transport secretary Douglas Alexander, a Brown ally, when a petition criticising road pricing attracted 1.8m signatures in 2007. Blair wrote an email to the petitioners explaining government policy.

Petitioners are promised a government response if they attract more than 200 signatures on a "serious" subject.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2009

The petition is online at: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/please-go/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;