When The World Sleeps

Yes, I know that that was India. But am I really the only person to be flabbergasted that the place to crown (or, as it turned out, not to crown) the new dynastic leader of the Pakistan People's Party is Birmingham, even if he has just graduated from Oxford and does speak with an upper-middle-class London accent? Why does no one find this choice of venue remotely remarkable? What if it had all kicked off between the attendees and the demonstrators, right there on the streets of the second-largest city in Britain, or indeed on any street in Britain? By no means only in relation to Pakistan, when will it it be our Independence Day? When will Britain awake to life and freedom?