A petition calling on Parliament to scrap Brexit and remain in the EU has attracted more than 900,000 signatures in less than 24 hours.

The total could doubtless have been higher had the petitions website not spent much of the day buckling under the weight of traffic from people attempting to sign.

The petition was started earlier this week and had attracted about 20,000 signatures up until last night.

But its momentum began to build after Theresa May's Downing Street speech last night, in which the Prime Minister restated her determination to pass the Brexit withdrawal agreement, which has already been heavily rejected twice in 'meaningful votes' of Parliament.

That speech was heavily criticised by MPs of all parties and by social media commentators.

The petition reads: "Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU. The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is 'the will of the people'. We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now, for remaining in the EU. A People's Vote may not happen - so vote now."

More than half a million people had signed the petition by the time the site went down shortly after 9am this morning, due to the volume of traffic.

Bradford Telegraph and Argus:

By 10am the site appeared to have stabilised again, with signatures over the 650,000 mark. Ten minutes later that had increased by another 25,000.

The website has been intermittently online and offline ever since, the total signatures received by 1.30pm just over 900,000.

The number includes almost 4,000 from across the Parliamentary constituencies covered by the T&A.

Another Brexit-related petition, created by a Leave supporter before the 2016 referendum and calling for a second referendum to be held if the winning side had less than 60% of the vote, holds the record for the most signatures on a UK government e-petition with 4,150,260.