‘Cancel Brexit’ petition gains momentum, fetches 1 million signs

London, March 21: While the Brexit situation turns more chaotic and desperate, an online petition asking UK Prime Minister Theresa May to scrap Brexit all together by revoking Article 50 has attracted nearly a million signatures, causing the country's parliament's petitions website crash on Thursday.

The parliament's petitions committee said in a tweet that the rate of signatures was "the highest the site has ever had to deal with", after the website crashed. The development occurred in the wake of May's asking the European Union (EU) for a delay in Brexit's date which is officially March 29.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told BBC Radio's Today that revoking Article 50 was possible but it was "highly unlikely".

According to BBC, Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the House of Commons said she was aware of the site's technical glitch but dismissed the petition as something that was not on the same scale as the pro-Brexit vote in the 2016 referendum when the 'yes' votes outdid the 'no' votes by a narrow margin.

Leadsom told MPs had the number of respondents be around 17.4 million will there be a case for taking action, the report added.

The petitions committee said at one point, there were nearly 2,000 signatures a minute.

The European Court of Justice ruled in December that the UK can unilaterally revoke Article 50 of the Treaty of the European Union which means the UK can stay in the grouping without receiving consent of 27 member states.

Hunt said in the BBC Today programme on Thursday that if May's deal faces a third defeat next week, the parliament could vote to scrap Brexit or the EU could push Britain to hold a second referendum. He though also added that both the options are "unlikely".

The initiator of the petition, Margaret Anne Georgiadou, told BBC that she "became like every other Remainer - very frustrated that we've been silenced and ignored for so long".