For seven years Geoff Mulgan worked at the heart of the New Labour government, as a key advisor to Tony Blair.
His roles including being the head of the Number 10 strategy unit.
Since he left Downing Street, he's had time to reflect on the way government appears compared with how it really is and to think about where the government of which he was a part went right and where it went wrong.
Over three weeks in October and November 2005 he shared his experiences and conclusions in a Sunday Supplement series provocatively called Honest Politics.
He began by looking at trust and why there is so much mutual incomprehension between the public and their politicians.
In part two, Geoff Mulgan challenges the notion that the forces of globalisation have made democratically elected governments powerless to do all that much. He argues that one of the mistakes of Tony Blair's government has been to under-estimate how much power it possesses to deliver change.
In the final part of his series, Geoff Mulgan argues that successful governments have clear values. And he challenges the idea that Tony Blair is a control freak.