The debut report by Cambridge Circus Research warns that Britain has become “a state at war with itself”, with public money being used to fund supposedly charitable organisations that campaign, litigate and brief against the policies ministers are trying to deliver.

Breaking the Blob: A study and antidote to British ungovernability, exposes how parts of the NGO and charity sector have become a “state-funded opposition loop”, forming a powerful network capable of frustrating the policy goals of elected governments.

Charles Talbot, co-author of the report, said:

“We hope that this work will be the first step into a wider review of how elements of civil society and the state seem to work at cross-purposes and end up frustrating elected governments. There is still much to be done, but this report can serve as a springboard. Fixing begins with understanding.”

Zack Salisbury, co-author said:

“This report, we hope, will be an important contribution to reforms that help us break out of some of the doom loops we have locked ourselves inside as a country. By depicting, and then understanding the mechanisms that cause frustration for ministers of all stripes, we can go some way towards addressing them.”

Key findings include:

• Charities seldom act alone, but often as networks through frontline organisations with overlapping mandates and objectives to coordinate and obtain favourable policy and legislative outcomes.
• It is typical for coalitions of charities across policy spheres to work together to achieve their goals.
• Many share common funders. It is typical for large grantmaking organisations to fund frontline organisations that have these overlapping mandates.
• The Refugee Council – an asylum-support charity – received around £41.6 million in government-contract income and grants between 2021 and 2025, while actively opposing the Conservative government’s Illegal Migration Act and Rwanda Plan.
• Similarly, Refugee Action recorded around £16.8 million in government-contract income and government grants between 2021 and 2025, while coordinating or participating in campaigns against government asylum policy – including organising a letter signed by 103 charities demanding that the then Home Secretary stop “scapegoating” migrants, as well as its Lift the Ban campaign aiming to allow asylum seekers to work in the UK.
• Despite official guidance that should prevent charities involving themselves in party politics, they are often engaged in campaigning against named ministers of state. This extends to criticism of numerous Home Secretaries, and the initiation of legal action that seeks to advance the return of Shamima Begum to Britain.
• The Charity Commission is responsible for overseeing more than 170,000 registered charities, but has only 457 employees, leaving it ill-equipped to adequately enforce charity law across such a vast and ever-changing sector.
• Identifying areas where competency issues and inadequate Charity Commission regulatory powers threaten national security and undermine whole-state approaches to countering the influence of hostile states, including Iran.

The report calls for:

• an end to the routine flow of public money to charities engaged in campaigning or strategic litigation;
• tighter charity law, so organisations whose dominant activity is political campaigning or policy obstruction cannot rely on broad charitable objects to retain charitable status;
• mandatory disclosure of grants, regrants, public funding, litigation activity and coalition membership;
• stricter separation between charitable activity and political campaigning, especially where charities transfer money to connected non-charitable campaign bodies;
• a new grassroots-majority test for policy-advocacy charities, requiring most income to come from members, small donors or genuinely local civic sources rather than large foundations or state grants;
• taxation of campaigning activity by charities.

Any government that is seriously committed to fixing Britain's malaise must contend with the sprawling, hard-to-define networks created and sustained by the NGO and charity sector. This report offers a guidebook to how this machinery works and how to dismantle it. Only then can Britain become governable again.

ENDS