1 Introduction
ID
|
Topic
|
Signatories
|
Date Opened
|
Date Closed
|
Group
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|
104334 | To debate a vote of no confidence in Health Secretary the Right Hon Jeremy Hunt | 231,136 | 20/07/2015 | 20/01/2016 | L |
104349 | Make the production, sale and use of cannabis legal. | 236,995 | 21/07/2015 | 21/01/2016 | L |
104796 | Don’t kill our bees! Immediately halt the use of Neonicotinoids on crops | 99,909 | 24/07/2015 | 24/01/2016 | L |
105560 | Fund more research into brain tumours, the biggest cancer killer of under-40s | 120,129 | 03/08/2015 | 04/02/2016 | M |
105991 | Accept more asylum seekers and increase support for refugee migrants in the UK. | 450,287 | 13/08/2015 | 14/02/2016 | L |
106133 | Make an allowance for up to 2 weeks term time leave from school for holiday. | 127,199 | 14/08/2015 | 15/02/2016 | C |
106477 | Stop allowing immigrants into the UK. | 216,949 | 25/08/2015 | 26/02/2016 | C |
106651 | Introduce a tax on sugary drinks in the UK to improve our children’s health. | 155,516 | 26/08/2015 | 27/02/2016 | L |
108072 | Give the Meningitis B vaccine to ALL children, not just newborn babies. | 823,348 | 14/09/2015 | 15/03/2016 | C |
108570 | Free Sergeant Alexander Blackman | 34,440 | 16/09/2015 | 17/03/2016 | C |
108782 | The DDRB’s proposals to change Junior Doctor’s contracts CANNOT go ahead. | 110,065 | 22/09/2015 | 23/03/2016 | L |
108944 | Save British Steel making. Scunthorpe, Teesside, Port Talbot etc. | 18,429 | 24/09/2015 | 25/03/2016 | NA |
109383 | Stop the scathing cuts to the Police budget. | 9,947 | 05/10/2015 | 06/04/2016 | M |
109649 | Prevent the scrapping of the maintenance grant. | 133,069 | 02/10/2015 | 03/04/2016 | L |
109702 | Restrict the use of fireworks to reduce stress and fear in animals and pets | 104,038 | 02/10/2015 | 03/04/2016 | C |
110776 | Make fair transitional state pension arrangements for 1950’s women | 193,186 | 20/10/2015 | 21/04/2016 | M |
111731 | Include expressive arts subjects in the Ebacc | 102,499 | 09/11/2015 | 10/05/2016 | L |
112342 | Stop the destructive ‘building our future’ office closure programme in HMRC | 2,585 | 16/11/2015 | 17/05/2016 | NA |
113064 | Vote no on military action in Syria against IS in response to the Paris attacks | 227,745 | 20/11/2015 | 21/05/2016 | L |
113231 | No UK airstrikes on Syria. | 190,223 | 22/11/2015 | 23/05/2016 | L |
113491 | Keep the NHS Bursary | 162,568 | 24/11/2015 | 25/05/2016 | L |
114003 | Block Donald J Trump from UK entry | 586,930 | 08/12/2015 | 09/06/2016 | L |
114907 | Don’t ban Trump from the United Kingdom | 46,622 | 09/12/2015 | 10/06/2016 | M |
115895 | Scrap plans forcing self-employed & small business to do 4 tax returns yearly | 114,504 | 16/12/2015 | 17/06/2016 | L |
116762 | STOP CAMERON spending British taxpayers’ money on Pro-EU Referendum leaflets | 221,866 | 22/12/2015 | 23/06/2016 | C |
118060 | Scrap the £35k threshold for non-EU citizens settling in the UK | 114,636 | 12/01/2016 | 12/07/2016 | L |
120702 | Urge the South Korean Government to end the brutal dog meat trade | 102,131 | 09/02/2016 | 09/08/2016 | M |
121262 | Jeremy Hunt to resume meaningful contract negotiations with the BMA. | 120,680 | 11/02/2016 | 11/08/2016 | L |
123324 | The 23 June should be designated as Independence Day, and celebrated annually. | 21,292 | 03/03/2016 | 03/09/2016 | C |
125003 | Ban driven grouse shooting | 123,077 | 20/03/2016 | 20/09/2016 | M |
125333 | Repeal the 1972 European Communities Act immediately on EU Referendum OUT vote. | 32,943 | 23/03/2016 | 23/09/2016 | C |
125475 | Debate in the House the Local Government Pension Scheme Investment Regulations | 105,772 | 24/03/2016 | 24/09/2016 | M |
125692 | Stop spending a fixed 0.7 per cent slice of our national wealth on Foreign Aid | 235,979 | 24/03/2016 | 24/09/2016 | C |
129698 | No more school penalty fines and bring back the 10 day authorised absence | 204,790 | 09/05/2016 | 10/11/2016 | C |
131167 | Stop retrospective changes to the student loans agreement | 134,194 | 23/05/2016 | 24/11/2016 | L |
131215 | EU Referendum Rules triggering a 2nd EU Referendum | 4,150,260 | 25/05/2016 | 26/11/2016 | L |
132140 | Free childcare when both parents are working. Not just those who are on benefits | 133,921 | 10/06/2016 | 11/12/2016 | C |
133540 | Let Parliament decide whether or not we remain a member of the European Union | 25,729 | 29/06/2016 | 30/12/2016 | L |
133618 | Invoke Article 50 of The Lisbon Treaty immediately. | 128,238 | 30/06/2016 | 31/12/2016 | C |
133767 | Ask the Government not to invoke article 50 of the Lisbon treaty. | 27,151 | 30/06/2016 | 31/12/2016 | L |
154593 | Not to allow freedom of movement as part of any deal with the EU after Brexit | 21,537 | 01/07/2016 | 02/01/2017 | C |
162934 | Force child cancer to the forefront of the NHS and government funding schemes | 117,183 | 29/07/2016 | 30/01/2017 | NA |
164851 | Protect grouse Moors and grouse shooting | 25,322 | 15/08/2016 | 16/02/2017 | M |
165905 | Shut down the domestic ivory market in the UK. | 108,530 | 30/08/2016 | 01/03/2017 | L |
167596 | Ban all non-recyclable/non-compostable packaging in the UK | 101,172 | 21/09/2016 | L | |
168127 | Demand an end to the pay restraint imposed on agenda for change NHS staff. | 106,156 | 03/10/2016 | M | |
168524 | Close all retail on boxing day, retail isn’t needed on boxing day! | 147,551 | 14/10/2016 | C | |
168678 | Give status to Police Dogs and Horses as ‘Police Officers’ | 127,261 | 10/10/2016 | C | |
171928 | Prevent Donald Trump from making a State Visit to the United Kingdom. | 1,862,036 | 29/11/2016 | L | |
176138 | Make it a specific criminal offence to attack any member of NHS Medical Staff. | 117,298 | 22/12/2016 | M | |
178844 | Donald Trump should make a State Visit to the United Kingdom. | 316,098 | 30/01/2017 | C |
2 Methodology
mclust
package (R Core Team [28]; Scrucca et al. [29]). As described above, most classification techniques are sensitive to the initial starting configuration. To help mitigate this the function randomPairs()
is called to obtain a random hierarchical structure suitable for the initial classification partition.petitions_p_elect
is an R dataframe of WPCs (rows) and e-petitions (columns) that expresses the number of e-petition signatories as a proportion of the WPC electorate. The first five columns are row descriptors for the WPC (namely, the Office for National Statistics code, the WPC name, the name of the MP, their political party and the 2015 electorate). This dataframe is available within the R Workspace supplied as Additional file 1.3 Data
corrplot
with the e-petitions re-ordered using the first principal component order, ‘FPC’, option (Wei and Simko [33]). Positive correlations are shown as blue whilst negative correlations are shown as red. Larger circles denote stronger correlations. Two distinct groupings of e-petitions form, where they have a positive relationship with those in the same group and a negative relationship with those in the other group. These two groups of e-petitions are identified by their grouping label in Table 1. Group GL e-petitions are broadly left leaning, liberal whilst group GC are more conservative in their intent. The middle, group GM are those which don’t correlate strongly with either group, or within themselves.4 Results
Title
|
Domestic Liberals
|
Index
|
International Liberals
|
Index
|
Nostalgic Brits
|
Index
|
Rural Concerns
|
Index
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Rank
|
Anti
-
BREXIT, Green, support for state intervention
|
Pro
-
immigration, anti
-
intervention, anti
-
Trump
|
No EU, pro
-
police and army, parents in control not schools
|
Care about rural/animal issues, UK a priority and should be in control
| ||||
1 | P.A50Never.133767 | 1.3279 | I.Pro.118060 | 2.7079 | P.Police.109383 | 1.2879 | E.KeepGrouse.164851 | 1.9084 |
2 | E.BanNonRecycle.167596 | 1.2922 | P.Syria.113064 | 2.2815 | E.FreeChildcare.132140 | 1.1763 | P.StopEU.116762 | 1.3174 |
3 | H.Sugary.106651 | 1.2486 | P.ParlA50.133540 | 2.1909 | I.Anti.106477 | 1.1708 | L.PoliceDogs.168678 | 1.2745 |
4 | P.TaxReturn.115895 | 1.2287 | E.BanNonRecycle.167596 | 2.0309 | L.NoShop.168524 | 1.1611 | H.Tumors.105560 | 1.2681 |
5 | H.OffenseAttackNHS.176138 | 1.2191 | P.Syria.113231 | 2.0253 | L.School2.129698 | 1.1413 | I.AntiAide.125692 | 1.2612 |
6 | P.ParlA50.133540 | 1.2136 | I.Pro.105991 | 2.0166 | P.Independence.123324 | 1.1072 | E.Fireworks.109702 | 1.2378 |
7 | P.SecondRef.131215 | 1.2057 | H.JuniorDoctors.108782 | 2.0083 | L.School1.106133 | 1.0999 | E.BanIvory.165905 | 1.2304 |
8 | E.Bees.104796 | 1.1940 | P.A50Never.133767 | 1.9757 | P.NoFreeMove.154593 | 1.0992 | E.BanGrouse.125003 | 1.2277 |
9 | E.Arts.111731 | 1.1925 | P.DoBlockTrump.114003 | 1.9116 | P.A50Now.133618 | 1.0768 | P.AntiEU.125333 | 1.2049 |
10 | E.BanIvory.165905 | 1.1887 | P.NoVisitTrump.171928 | 1.8905 | L.Blackman.108570 | 1.0547 | P.NoFreeMove.154593 | 1.1679 |
4.1 Pen portraits of the classes
5 Discussion
Party
|
Domestic Liberals
|
International Liberals
|
Nostalgic Brits
|
Rural Concerns
|
---|---|---|---|---|
Conservative | 71 | 23 | 91 |
133
|
Labour | 29 | 72 |
147
| 14 |
Scottish National Party | 3 | 12 | 20 | 0 |
Liberal Democrats | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
Democratic Unionist Party | 0 | 1 | 9 | 0 |
Sinn Féin | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0 |
Plaid Cymru | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
Green | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Independent | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
Total | 110 | 115 | 276 | 149 |
OAC
|
Domestic Liberals
|
International Liberals
|
Nostalgic Brits
|
Rural Concerns
|
---|---|---|---|---|
Constrained City Dwellers | 17% | 16% |
\( \textbf{56}\textbf{\%} \)
| 11% |
Cosmopolitans | 20% |
\( \textbf{66}\textbf{\%} \)
| 10% | 3% |
Ethnicity Central | 9% |
\( \textbf{74}\textbf{\%} \)
| 16% | 1% |
Hard-Pressed Living | 15% | 8% |
\( \textbf{57}\textbf{\%} \)
| 20% |
Multicultural Metropolitans | 15% | 29% |
\( \textbf{51}\textbf{\%} \)
| 5% |
Rural Residents | 20% | 14% | 17% | 48% |
Suburbanites | 19% | 8% | 48% | 25% |
Urbanites | 24% | 14% | 36% | 25% |
Total | 18% | 20% | 42% | 21% |