Most people who plan to vote for Britain’s Conservative Party don’t believe that charities are ‘too political’.
In a poll released by the New Philanthropy Capital (NPC), an independent think tank for charities, just 22 per cent of Tory supporters said that charities are ‘too political’, versus 63 per cent who said they ‘get it about right’ and 7 per cent who thought charities should be more political.
The poll comes off warnings by NPC chief executive Dan Corry for politicians to take civil society more seriously.
Corry, a former Treasury official and Head of the Number 10 Policy Unit, warned politicians “to embrace the charity sector – not treat it like a difficult relative to be patronised at best and ignored at worst”.
At the Ignites conference held in London on 17-19 October, Corry called for a new government, potentially Labour if it unseats the Conservatives in the next general election, to introduce a ‘civil society test’ for all new policies, which would mean assessing all new policies to see if they could be delivered more efficiently by charities and other social organisations.
Corry suggests that backing charities could help prime minister Rishi Sunak ahead of next year’s election, though a number of polls show the Labour Party could sweep to power, off the back of two byline election victories.
During its 13-year tenure, the Conservative Party has had a fluctuating relationship with philanthropy. The economic turmoil caused by Liz Truss’ brief leadership in the UK will have a lasting impact on the reputation of philanthropists.
Shafi Musaddique is a news editor at Alliance magazine.
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