Alastair's Blog

This is not hindsight speaking, because I said at the time of John McCain’s appointment of Sarah Palin as his running mate that it was ‘tactically brilliant, strategically disastrous.’ I have said it many times since, as The McCain-Palin blunder is one of my favourite case studies when out and about talking on why strategy [...]

Here is a piece CNN asked for on what I think will be the long term significance of the Olympics in London 2012. I always thought London 2012 would be a success but never imagined it would be quite the triumph it has turned out to be. From the brilliant opening ceremony to the festival [...]

These have been two great weeks, and this is an important moment for the country. But my heart sank this morning on hearing the Prime Minister is to make an announcement on school and elite sport. Not because the government should not be doing all it can to capitalise on the energy and positivity and [...]

Just back from another fabulous day in and around the Olympic Park. To any of you who have missed my blog musings in recent days, apologies, but I have been loving every minute of every day just absorbing and enjoying as much sport as I can. But it is less about the sport than the [...]

I am biased. What I say on here, or when speaking in public, reflects a view that is biased towards the left, towards progressive causes, towards causes I believe in and values I hold. Even when I was a journalist, though I strove to get my facts right, I always admitted that my journalism was [...]

As Boris Johnson charmingly and ruthlessly exploits the Olympics to build and extend his profile, he is beginning to remind me of another blonde charismatic Tory, namely Michael Heseltine. The more Boris protests that he is not seeking to undermine David Cameron, the more I am reminded of Hezza’s pitch when he was but publicly [...]

With apologies to Gorkana, who interviewed me a while back, and to whom I said I would post the interview when they ran it, here it is a few days late. They chose to run it on the day of Danny Boyle’s brilliant Olympics opening ceremony, so in common with many others on the planet, [...]

There is something very British about the obsession (which I confess to sharing) with empty seats at big events. I am not aware of any other country where ‘you couldn’t sell all your tickets’ is a popular football chant insult. But unless the empty seats problem is solved soon, it is an insult likely to [...]

It was as a result of a mid morning phone call from Tessa Jowell that I went to my diaries for 2002 and 2003 and tweeted some of the key moments in the history of the Olympic Bid. She was calling from the athletes’ village, where she is staying for the duration of the Games [...]

I have introduced you before to my friend Mark Wright, a Labour activist and Elvis impersonator. He does however have an even bigger musical passion than The King, namely The Boss, and alerted me to an interview Bruce Springsteen has given to The New Yorker, in which he talks about his father’s mental health problems [...]