The hypocrisy of the Charity Commission

On Monday, I appeared on Good Morning Britain to debate President Trump’s forthcoming state visit with Asad Rehman, the executive director of War on Want. I was surprised to learn that War on Want, a charity in receipt of lottery funding, is a partner in the Stop Trump Coalition, the group behind the anti-Trump demonstration last year. It is hoping to organise an even bigger protest next month.

The reason this came as a shock is because the Charity Commission issued an ‘official warning’ to the Institute of Economic Affairs in February for a report on how to create a prosperous post-Brexit UK that wasn’t sufficiently ‘balanced’ and ‘neutral’ and therefore fell afoul of the rules regarding ‘political activity’. The IEA is the second thinktank to be told off by the regulator for being too ‘political’ in the past 12 months. Last year, it ordered the Legatum Institute to take down a report on UK trade policy that, like the IEA report, argued for a particular post-Brexit strategy.

The regulator’s targeting of these thinktanks is a little baffling, given that it hasn’t reprimanded other charities, such as the Institute for Public Policy Research, which have published reports on the UK’s post–Brexit trade policy. Where was the ‘official warning’ for the Resolution Foundation, a charity that published a report claiming the vote for Brexit had left the average UK household £1,500 worse off? Could it be because the IEA and Legatum are right-of-centre, whereas the IPPR and the Resolution Foundation, which is run by a former Labour party policy director, are left-of-centre? It would be ironic if a UK government regulator wasn’t being ‘balanced’ and ‘neutral’ in its choice of which charities to reprimand for being insufficiently ‘balanced’ and ‘neutral’.