much less keen on listening when they get tough answers back" You say in the book that the gap between the Westminster village and everyone else has never been greater. Would you say that comes in spite of more effort than ever to close that gap? No, I wouldn't actually. I don't think that there has been enough of an effort to close the gap. One of my conclusions in the book is that politicians listen very hard when they want to be elected. They listen when they get answers they find it easy to deal with -- they are much less keen on listening when they get tough answers back. Throughout most of the time that I was involved, there was plenty of evidence flagging up problems and issues and things that politicians might think about. But where things were difficult to address, political leaders sometimes shied away from that. Just take expenses: my findings - and I reported them back to politicians - had told me for a long time that there was growing mistrust about what politicians actually did, how they were rewarded, what their motivations were. There were lots of opportunities to address that. It didn't happen. I think with any client-researcher relationship, for want of a better way of describing it, the person giving the advice can only give the advice. Politicians need to listen and they do also need to lead. You don't slavishly follow what the focus group say they want to hear,