Neal is Executive Director of the good society pressure group Compass and was author of All Consuming (Penguin, 2009) and co-editor of The Progressive Century (Palgrave, 2001). He serves on the Advisory Board of the social democracy journal Renewal which he helped found, is  an adviser to public ownership campaigners We Own It and a Commissioner for a Gender Equal Economy.  He writes about politics, democarcy and transformation on sites such as the Guardian, New Statesman and Open Democracy. He has worked as a trade union researcher, an advisor to Gordon Brown and ran a communications company. He is a partner at the progressive communicators Jericho Chambers where he works on the responsible tax project.  Neal has been described by the late Zygmunt Bauman as “one of the most insightful and inventive minds on the British political stage”, in the Guardian as “the most optimistic commentator in western Europe” and as the “Eeyore of the left” in the Sunday Times.