Brexit: over two million sign petition for new referendum, by AAP.

More than two million people have signed a petition calling for a second referendum, after Britain’s shock vote to leave the EU.

You know that if the PC side had won there would be no talk of another referendum in the next decade. Aren’t they precious?

They also have form. When the EU’s Treaty of Lisbon was put to the Irish people in a  referendum in 2008 they rejected it. The vote was put again in 2009, when it passed:

This is European democracy, Henry Ford style: you can reach any answer, as long as it is yes.

The problem that the Irish pose to the European elites is that they are constitutionally bound to hold a referendum on all issues such as these while other countries can ratify through their parliaments using government majorities or cosy coalition deals to get their way.

Whenever any major development in the EU is actually put to the people, the answer is invariably ‘no’ as it was with Denmark on Maastricht, Ireland on Nice and Lisbon and France and Holland on the constitution.

Had any of these been put to a referendum here in Britain it would have been rejected.

The Irish foreign minister maintains that Ireland will receive ‘concessions’ in return for holding another referendum to allow the treaty to be ratified, as it must be by all 27 nations.

In that case, will it not be a different treaty and therefore subject to re-ratification in every other country, or does that not matter?

The fact that European governments dare not put any of these integrationist advances to a popular vote captures the essence of the EU: profoundly undemocratic, unaccountable and remote from the people it purports to represent.

The petition had many fake signatures:

Some 39,411 residents of Vatican City, home to Pope Francis, appeared to have signed the petition by Sunday morning, despite the tiny city state having a total population of just 800.

In isolationist North Korea, one of the least internet-connected countries in the world, 23,778 people had apparently gone online to express their frustration at the UK’s decision to quit the EU.

Located 800 miles south east of the Falklands, and with a permanent population of zero, the South Atlantic British Overseas Territory of South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands was responsible for more than 3,000 signatures.