A pub owner’s public petition lodges a protest against the U.K.’s new Labour government — and more than 2 million people have signed it.

A few weeks ago, I quoted a comment to the effect that in rejecting the Tories and (by an underwhelming plurality) voting for a Labour government, Brits had replaced a government they despised with a government they hated.

At the time, Keir Starmer, Britain’s new prime minister, had suffered, at least according to one poll, the biggest fall in approval rating after winning an election of any prime minister in modern times. His approval rating was +11 in July, by late October it was -38. Another poll puts him at -29.

Normally when a party wins office it can expect to enjoy some sort of honeymoon. With more than 400 successful candidates, Labour won a very large majority (174 seats) in the 650-seat House of Commons, but much of that was due to the way that first-past-the-post voting punishes splits within one ideological group. Splits on the left contributed to Mrs. Thatcher’s large majorities, and a massive split on the right (between the Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s populist Reform party) helped Starmer, a charmless authoritarian, to an impressive parliamentary majority with only 34 percent of the vote. To that should be added the share of the vote won by other leftish parties, such as the Liberals (12 percent) and the Greens (7 percent). Starmer is not so isolated as it may seem.

Nevertheless he has not had a good start. Much of this unpopularity is due to a series of broken promises. Labour is taxing more than it said it would, it is spending more than it said it would, and, under the direction of the not altogether sane Ed Miliband, the secretary of state for energy security and net zero (you can’t have both, Ed), Labour is adopting climate policies that will do nothing for the climate but will do substantial damage to the economy.

Meanwhile, in between fending off questions about her inventive résumé, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister), has decided that the way to generate growth despite the greenery, down-the-drain spending, and growing tax burden is to loot local government pension funds. And, because one source of malinvestment is not enough, she has established a national “wealth” fund, drawing on borrowed money and the proceeds of another tax raid on the oil and gas sector that it is squeezing out of existence. Meanwhile, the government is struggling to deal with the heavy migrant inflows it was bequeathed by the Tories. Oh, yes, there’s a decent chance of a recession in the next twelve months.

In response, a pub owner named Michael Westwood has set up a petition on the parliamentary website calling for a new general election. He believes that “the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.” For what it’s worth, he is right. The petition has been up for about a week and has already attracted (as I write) 2,733,526 signatures, a number large enough to mean that Parliament must “consider” holding a debate on the question. Even if a number of those signatures are the work of bots or the ineligible, that’s still a lot of people who have signed, although far fewer than the more than 6 million (including bots, etc.) who signed a petition to cancel Brexit in 2019.

There will be no election. Labour has that massive parliamentary majority and, less than six months after the last general election, is under no pressure to go back to the country.

The petition has irritated (among others) the Spectator’s Sam Leith. A debate would be a “grotesque waste of parliamentary time.” Who knew that parliamentary time was so lacking? Who knew that it was being put to such good use?

I’ve no idea whether there will be a debate or not (probably not, unless Starmer wants to make a pointed demonstration of his immovability). Nevertheless, the petition is a peaceful protest against the way that Labour is running the country, and, unlike the protests that have been causing so much trouble in London in recent years, it is consuming no police time, and it is not disrupting traffic. No works of art have been attacked. It tells those opposed to Labour that they are not alone and serves, maybe, a convening purpose. For their part, Labour supporters can look at their vast majority in Parliament and the fact that tens of millions have not signed the petition and feel reassured.

I cannot help wondering whether some are objecting to the idea of this petition because it is a small knock against the idea that democratic involvement is merely a matter of showing up to vote every few years, leaving the grown-ups to decide what’s what in that oh so valuable parliamentary time.

In any event, what really matters is this: Michael Caine has signed the petition. Michael Caine! This isn’t entirely surprising. Caine voted for Brexit and was a big Thatcher fan. Then again, he voted for Tony Blair, but not Ed Miliband . . . “that socialist one,” when Miliband was the Labour leader.

Smart man, Michael Caine.