Alastair Brian Walden (8 July 1932 – 9 May 2019) was a British journalist and broadcaster who spent over a decade as a Labour politician and Member of Parliament (MP).

When All Saints was abolished, Walden sought and gained the Labour nomination for Birmingham Ladywood, and was elected there in February 1974 and October 1974.

In the aftermath of Enoch Powell's November 1968 Eastbourne speech advocating the repatriation of immigrants, Walden urged Prime Minister Harold Wilson not to waver in his opposition to Powell's proposals: "If the Government did waver and harass and bully some of Her Majesty's subjects towards the boats, British politics would sink to the gutter".

[13] After Jenkins resigned from the deputy leadership in April 1972, Wilson appointed Walden to a junior position on Labour's shadow treasury team.

I have as yet read no explanation of why the national interest requires that there should be a strike and an election before miners can be paid money they could be given without either taking place".

Walden opened the debate by opposing capital punishment and declaring it to be "judicial execution" and "a cold-blooded act of the state to take a life".

Walden told the Commons: "I think that the anti-Market campaign will in the end... degenerate into narrow nationalism, the plea for a siege economy, for Socialism in one country.

He also wrote that "as a grammar school meritocrat who had originally looked for social progress from the Labour Party, Walden recognized her as offering what he sought".

[24] In November 1976, Walden joined the fellow right-wing Labour MP John Mackintosh in abstaining on the vote for the government's Dock Works Regulation Bill and thereby wrecked its passage through Parliament.

[26] The executive committee of Walden's constituency Labour Party supported his stance[27] although left-wing demonstrators criticised him.

[28] After the 1977 Budget, Walden said, "Our level of direct taxation—income tax—is ludicrously high, and our rate of indirect taxation is not taking enough of the burden".

On 16 June 1977, Walden resigned from the House of Commons by taking the Chiltern Hundreds to become a full-time journalist and broadcaster.

[32] The week after this conversation, Walden's programme focused on the necessity of legislation against secondary action by trade unions.

Lacking the suave public school confidence of his predecessor in the job, Peter Jay, Walden runs on adrenalin and a determination to wring a bit of political revelation and a slice of history out of whichever politician happens to be in the studio with him.

[33]During an interview with Thatcher in 1983, Walden coined the term "Victorian values" to describe her beliefs, which she accepted and repeated on numerous occasions.

[38] After Rupert Murdoch moved the production of The Sunday Times from Fleet Street to a new plant in Wapping in January 1986, the print unions voted to strike in protest.

[40] On 26 October 1989, the Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, resigned because Thatcher was unwilling to sack her economics adviser, Sir Alan Walters.

[42] However, as John Campbell notes, Walden's "journalistic instinct and her lack of candour made for a devastating exposé, watched by three million people with their Sunday lunch".

[45] Upon leaving Weekend World as presenter in 1986, Walden was succeeded by Matthew Parris,[4] formerly Conservative MP for West Derbyshire; the series came to an end two years later.

In his autobiography, Dyke noted that the Walden one-on-one interview was the most popular part of the programme, and was also the cheapest to make.

[47] He was the subject of parody in Spitting Image as a puppet with a slight speech impediment, voiced by impressionist Steve Nallon.