The government is "clarifying" the law on charities. This is similar to the way that they "clarified" the law on electoral reform, opening up the system to electoral fraud. The new law will allow charities to campaign on behalf of political causes (including parties) and gain donations.
The planned changes, which will be published in draft form today and considered by the board of the Charity Commission next week, come after Ed Miliband, the Cabinet Minister responsible for charities, said that guidance on when charities can lobby politically was unclear and confusing.
News of the planned changes will fuel the wider dispute over secret political donations after it emerged that the campaign team of Peter Hain, the Work and Pensions Secretary, had siphoned £50,000 of the £100,000 undeclared funds via a think-tank to his campaign to become Labour's deputy leader in the summer.
There are suspicions that the loosening of rules barring charities from political activities has been pushed through to get Mr Brown off the hook of a controversy involving his own favourite think-tank, the Smith Institute.
Another pattern of this government: using bureaucratic obfuscations and clarifications to ease rules in their favour whilst reducing the quality of governance. Prepare for a Charities reform bill in a few years time when scandals hit, although we should expect no indepth investigation of the Smith Institute.