Labour must not dismiss calls for general election as ‘foreign interference’

Labour MPs must not to dismiss calls for a general election as “foreign interference”, a Conservative MP has urged.

Debating a House of Commons petition signed by 3.02 million people, Father of the House Sir Edward Leigh warned “public disappointment and anger” could give rise to “populism” throughout the country, if the Government cannot allay it.

Signatories to the petition, which members of the public can use a UK postcode to sign, have called for a fresh vote.

It followed a poll in July last year, which saw Labour win by a landslide, securing 411 seats to the Tories’ 121.

In Westminster Hall on Monday, Labour’s Yasmin Qureshi said: “We found that when Labour got elected, they found the first thing was a £20 billion of deficit – a big black hole which no one knew about.

“So therefore we had to take decisions – do you know what? You can try to shout, whatever. I’m not going to give up, so let me speak please, whoever is making the noises – £20 billion black hole.

“Obviously, therefore, the Government had to take some policies in order to plug that black hole and that means a rise in the winter fuel, it means introducing inheritance tax, it means a national insurance contribution (rise).”

Some MPs groaned when the MP for Bolton South and Walkden said: “This petition has grown, some of it to do with a lot of misinformation, some it it to do with foreign interference.

“You may laugh at it, but that happens to be correct as well.”

But Sir Edward warned MPs that the petition was an “expression of public disappointment and anger”.

He said: “I don’t want to be overtly party political here, but I do think that it would be useful for the Government not just to dismiss this petition as being cooked up abroad, apparently, or by nefarious forces, anti-democratic forces.

“I think it’d be quite wise to listen to the public.”

The MP for Gainsborough continued: “There is undoubtedly a sense of alienation in the country and it is partly due to the issues that I have been talking about. It’s also general issues, and I sit on the Council of Europe and I see how other countries in France and Germany and Italy are coping with political unrest and unless the two major parties actually listen to the public and respond to their concerns, then we will simply see the rise of more and more populism in this country – of far-right and far-left parties.

“I think that there is a particular issue, and this is what I want to talk about, where people feel alienated.

“They cannot understand how it is in a country like ours that in the last year something like 35,000 people jumped the queue, crossed the Channel, are put in hotels forever and stay here forever and break the rules.”

Sir Edward said a more cautious approach to policy might have been removing payments of up to £300 to help with winter fuel from “higher taxpayers” rather than all except claimants of certain benefits, because “when you take a winter fuel allowance from somebody whose total income is only £13,000 a year, that is bound to cause great hardship”.

Imogen Walker, Labour MP for Hamilton and Clyde Valley, said: “For all their failures, actually, I think that one of the cruellest things that the last government did was to take away hope, and to take away the belief that things can be changed not by gimmicks, not by slogans, but by doing the work and by doing the right thing even when it’s difficult.”

And Reform UK Nigel Farage later said: “I don’t think the 8,000 people in Clacton that signed this did so just to get a fresh general election, because they knew that wouldn’t happen.

“What they were actually expressing was a sense of utter disenchantment with the entire political system.

“And this debate can be used as a game of ping-pong this afternoon between the two political parties that have dominated British politics since the end of the First World War, but actually something bigger is going on out there.”

Mr Farage added: “Over 50 years, I can’t think of a government that’s seen a collapse in confidence as quickly as this one has.”

Turning to the issue of “confidence”, Mr Farage took aim at Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves and said the pair “look like they’re going to a family funeral every day – there is an air of miserable-ism”.

The petition reads: “I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.”