Alastair's Blog

With thanks to Labour’s media monitoring department, and to the Financial Times, here is the first’s account of the second’s report today on school standards. ‘Poorer pupils seen to be catching up in exams’ (FT p4) – Poorer children closed the educational achievement gap on children from wealthier backgrounds during Labour’s last term of office, [...]

While the press revels in the judgement that allows them to carry on with kiss and tell stories about footballers (provided they are England captain it would seem) I would like to focus not on Rio Ferdinand but on Robert Enke. He was the German goalkeeper who killed himself after a long battle with depression, [...]

An interesting little passage in Polly Toynbee’s column in The Guardian this morning, as she described the post-Ed speech process in the press room at Liverpool. “‘Lurching to the left’ and ‘Red Ed’ were the inevitable responses of the mostly rightwing press convening in an instant huddle after the speech. If you want to see [...]

Ed Miliband said he was going to be his own man, and follow his own instincts and his own values, which is surely the right approach for a leader. He was at his best today when he was passionate about where those instincts and values lay. He had a core argument – that the political, [...]

At least the economy is centre stage as Labour’s conference begins. It has to be. And finally, after a year of the main parties arguing over the size and scale of the deficit, and the speed with which it should be reduced, the argument appears to be moving to the much bigger issues that now [...]

The news was a little bit scary last night. Because whilst accepting that the media likes to put over the most negative view of the world, even the ones who usually show a bit of balance left you with the impression it was all gloom, gloom, gloom. And there is a horrible feeling of self-fulfilling [...]

To a posh Knightsbridge hotel last night, and the launch of the Harvard Business Review in London, which they chose to celebrate with a discussion between me and BT chairman Sir Michael Rake. Nice guy, and very smart. At one point the moderator, the splendidly named Adi Ignatius, chastised us gently for ‘agreeing too much’. [...]

‘Maximum openness for maximum trust’ was one of the principles I tried to operate when heading up attempts to co-ordinate communications across government. There were risks attached to that, of course. But I think I can count on the fingers of one hand, for example, the number of times we suffered from a leak of [...]

As the Liberal Democrats prepare for their conference, I hope enough of them will be tugged by the Democrat side of the equation to make an issue of the government’s preparations for the planned boundary changes. I refer not simply to the redrawing of boundaries, loaded though this is in favour of the Tories, but [...]

Someone very kindly sent me an advance copy of ‘A Life Too Short,’ which tells the story of German goalkeeper Robert Enke, who ended his own life after years of struggling with depression. It is not out until the end of the month, so I won’t say too much, other than the fact that having [...]