Gordon Brown must go, say 72,000 Britons

A petition on Downing Street's own website calling for Prime Minister Gordon Brown to resign attracted 72,000 signatures before closing at midnight on Wednesday.

The tally makes it the 10th most popular e-petition since No10 started them in 2006. But the prime minister is not expected to reply.

The site says petitions with 500 signatures or more are "usually" passed on to officials, and promises everyone signing will get an email detailing the government's response.

But Brown's spokesman on Thursday poured cold water on expectations that he might reply, telling reporters, "There are e-petitions on a whole range of issues. Obviously, the prime minister doesn't personally respond to every one, otherwise he would have little time to do anything else.''

The petition states simply, "We the undersigned petition the prime minister to resign." It was posted in April by academic Kalvis Jansons from Hitchin, Herts, who describes himself as a disillusioned Labour supporter.

Jansons said, ''There are many reasons why we might want Brown to resign, but rather than having lots of narrow petitions on this topic ... I wanted one for all of us.''

The most popular e-petition on the Downing Street site, opposing road pricing, attracted 1,811,424 signatures in 2007, while calls for a new Remembrance Day bank holiday and for the Red Arrows to fly at the London 2012 Olympics were each signed by more than 500,000 people.