Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU petition
online petition to the UK parliament
Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU was a petition submitted to the UK Parliament petitions website calling on the UK government to revoke article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, and remain a member state of the European Union. Following the referendum of 23 June 2016, in which the electorate of the United Kingdom voted by 17,410,742 to 16,141,241 to leave the European Union, the United Kingdom invocation of Article 50 occurred on 29 March 2017. This set a deadline for leaving the EU of 29 March 2019 which was later extended to 31 October 2019.
By 24 March 2019, the petition had received 5 million signatures, and is the most-signed online petition to the UK parliament on record; it reached 6 million on 31 March, and closed on 20 August with a total of 6,103,056 signatures, the highest figure obtained for any British petition since the 5.75 million claimed for the Chartists' petition of 1848.
Background
On Thursday 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom held a referendum in which the electorate voted, by 17,410,742 to 16,141,241 to leave the European Union, with a turnout of 72.2%. As a result, on 29 March 2017 the UK Government invoked Article 50 to inform the European Council that they intended to leave the union on 29 March 2019. The European Council subsequently agreed that this deadline could be extended, and UK law changes are planned to do that. Following a ruling in December 2018 by the European Court of Justice that the United Kingdom may legally revoke Article 50, the petition to do so was started on 20 February 2019 by a former college lecturer. At first slow to accrue signatures, it grew in popularity after British Prime Minister Theresa May claimed that she would not be asking the EU for a prolonged extension to Article 50.
Objective
The petition directly asks the government to revoke article 50 and therefore keep the United Kingdom in the European Union.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU petition” is online petition to the UK parliament. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Revoke, Article and remain, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “online petition to the UK parliament” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q62339486. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2016, 2017, 2019 and 1848.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU petition”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU petition primary sources, Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU petition archive and Revoke research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU petition”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU petition” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.