UK

Manchester: (By Tajammul Gurmani) Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) North West organised a protest outside the Consulate General of Pakistan in Manchester for the release of former prime minister of Pakistan and PTI founder Imran Khan. Former president of PTI North West Asif Butt led the protest, while Faree Butt, Bilal Hussain, Khalid Rehman and other leaders addressed the gathering. A large number of overseas Pakistanis attended the protest. The protesters also raised slogans in favour of their leader, Imran Khan. Asif Butt said that the Pakistani nation should come out on the roads against the illegal detention of Imran Khan. He said Pakistan is suffering from heavy debt from the IMF because the present regime has failed to control inflation in the country. Faree Butt said that Imran Khan has been illegally detained and that all cases against him are fake. He said they should raise their voices for his release, adding that peaceful protest is their right and they will continue this protest for the release of Imran Khan. Bilal Hussain said that the government needs accountability of corrupt generals, judges and bureaucrats, and that they must work within their parameters. The coordinator of PTI South West, Khalid Hussain, said that the Pakistani government sold PIA at a cheap rate and that the present rulers are not eligible to save national assets. “If the Pakistani nation comes out on the roads, Pakistan can get rid of the corrupt regime,” he added.

London: (By Chris Powell)The next general election will be no ordinary democratic contest. Not the usual swing of the pendulum this way or that. It will be a key moment in the history of our democracy – and it could be less than three years away.
Be in no doubt: populists represent a new and terrifying threat to the kind of free elections and free society we cherish but now take for granted. As Donald Trump declared at a pre-election rally in July 2024: “In four years you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.” Or, as his fellow populist Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, said: “Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”
Yet, here in the UK, where is the urgently needed counterplan on a huge scale to thwart and head off such an existential threat? It is simply not in place, nor does it appear to be even at the planning stage. We are at a very dangerous moment. We simply cannot afford to allow Nigel Farage’s Reform UK to have a free run and become established and entrenched as a credible potential government in the minds of disenchanted voters. The longer they go unchallenged, the more unthreatening and risk-free they will seem to voters. Just hoping that Reform and Farage implode, or that the right-wing vote will somehow fracture, is potentially suicidal for our freedom and democracy.
The Labour party has taken some small steps to counter Reform. Keir Starmer has at last begun to talk about a closer relationship with Europe, and more broadly challenge the disastrous failure that is Brexit. Presentationally, we have recently seen the first decent Starmer videos on TikTok. But it is small-scale and the narrative surrounding this government has more often been about its own failings and internal conflicts than the battle it faces against a populist surge.
If this goes on, the threat will grow. It is already doing just that on the international stage. The new US foreign policy strategy aims to support European populist parties. That is frightening. The 50-year-old Conservative Political Action Conference, reinvigorated by hard-right influencer Steve Bannon, brings populist parties in the US and Europe together to combine their electoral experiences and share initiatives. But what is there from the anti-populist side at European level? Nothing.

In September 1995, Tony Blair and his team met at my home for their first election planning meeting. All the key players were involved. New Labour was ahead in the polls. But we did not just hope that the Tories under John Major would continue to decline. We planned scrupulously for a complete reorientation, to signal a real break from the past by Labour: new strategy, new branding, new policy, new presentation, new organisation. This kind of no-holds-barred thinking is needed. A fundamental reset.
Once elected, several populists have faced accusations of rigging democratic political systems to make it nearly impossible for them ever to lose. Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Erdoğan in Turkey, Narendra Modi in India, now Trump in the US, Robert Fico in Slovakia and Andrej Babis in the Czech Republic all seem to adopt the same game plan.
Since he came to power in 2010, Orbán has changed the voting system to benefit himself. The judiciary became accountable solely to him; they appear to freely throw opponents in jail. Last year Erdoğan jailed his presidential opponent, Ekrem İmamoglu, who was ahead in the polls, and demanded he serve a 2,000-year sentence.
Some populists have been accused of meddling with national broadcasters, by appointing cronies to their board. They deny opposition parties equal rights to promote themselves, so they have no chance. This is the populist playbook. What chance then for our elections, our free speech? How will the BBC and independent media fare? An independent judiciary?

King Charles has used his Christmas message to call on communities to come together in an increasingly divided world, urging them to get “to know our neighbours”.
His traditional speech, recorded in Westminster Abbey, called on themes of unity and respect in a time of global conflict.
“Indeed as our world seems to spin ever faster, our journey may pause to quieten our minds, in TS Eliot’s words, ‘at the still point of the turning world’ and allow ourselves to renew,” he said. The speech included a call for quiet and calm as “our world seems to spin ever faster”, with King Charles quoting poet TS Eliot’s words about finding the “still point of the turning world”.
A royal aide said this was a reference to the social impact of new technologies on communities, and that people might consider a “digital detox”.
For the second year, the message was delivered in a location away from a royal palace, the King using a chapel in the abbey to talk about life’s “pilgrimage” and the lessons for current times.
In front of Christmas trees originally used for the Princess of Wales’s carol concert at the Abbey, he spoke of the importance of community cohesion and bridging divides.
“As I meet people of different faiths, I find it enormously encouraging to hear how much we have in common,” said the King, speaking under the chapel’s famous vaulted ceiling.
“With the great diversity of our communities we can find the strength to ensure that right triumphs over wrong.” He praised the wartime generation’s “courage and sacrifice” and their togetherness in the face of adversity, with the broadcast showing pictures of this year’s commemorations marking 80 years since the end of World War Two in Europe and the Far East. “These are the values which have shaped our country. “As we hear of division, both at home and abroad, they are the values of which we must never lose sight,” said the King.

Local Government Secretary Steve Reed has written to all council leaders in England warning them not to introduce four-day working weeks.
As reported by the Telegraph, the letter is understood to say that “council staff undertaking part-time work for full-time pay without compelling justification would be considered an indicator, among a wide range of factors, of potential failure”. He added that he hoped he had made the government’s policy “unambiguously clear to all councils”.
A Labour source said “Voters deserve high standards and hard work from local councils, and seeing council staff working a four-day week just won’t cut it.”
“They should get on with the job and make sure residents get the best service possible five days a week,” the source added. In the letter to the councils, which was reported by The Telegraph, external, Reed says that local authorities should not be offering “full-time pay for part-time work”. Reed previously expressed his “deep disappointment” in the first UK council to adopt a four-day working week.
South Cambridgeshire District Council, which is led by the Liberal Democrats, became the first to make a permanent move to a four-day week in July after it began trialling a shorter working week in 2023. Reed said there had been a decline in performance in the council’s housing service and he asked how the local authority would “mitigate” this.
The government can intervene in any council if it is deemed to be failing. Last year Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also rejected civil servants’ demands for a four-day working week. Critics of a four-day week say it would reduce productivity and slow economic growth but others disagree.
A trial in the Scottish public sector this year found an increase in productivity and improvements in staff well-being. The Autonomy Institute, which was commissioned by the Scottish government to co-ordinate the pilot, found that 98% of staff judged morale and motivation to have improved. Helen Catt & George Wright
BBC Political Correspondent