Our view of this is more than a little dyspeptic. The question is though, should we be describing ourselves as cynics here, or realists?

The European Union has been accused of using the world's poorest as a “bargaining chip” after threatening to pull funding from British aid organisations in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Senior officials at the European commission have been inserting disclaimers in aid contracts warning UK development charities that they could be dropped as a partner in programmes should Britain crash out of the EU next year.

The move has brought fierce criticism and warnings it will hurt “the most vulnerable people on the planet”.

As we're all aware that third sector has quite some influence in our domestic political life. To threaten to pull large parts of their funding unless - well, there's going to be a certain amount of activity on that unless, isn't there?

Large charities losing a chunk of their funding unless there's a deal, that deal quite obviously being something the EU itself gets to determine by agreeing to it or not. It's possible to describe this as having bought the loyalty and activity of a large portion of that influential third sector.

The interesting question is whether that description reveals one to be a cynic or a realist.

One estimate tells us that UK charities receive some £300 million from the EU. That'll buy quite a lot of political pressure.

For example:

Friends of the Earth, the environmental charity under fire for openly campaigning to keep Britain in the EU, is "urgently" reviewing whether its activities breach new impartiality guidelines.

The charity pledged to look "very carefully" at how detailed advice from the watchdog released on Monday impacts its campaigning as a Tory MP formally complained it was breaching the rules.

In findings that will fuel claims of a conflict of interest, analysis by this newspaper has found that Friends of the Earth groups received almost £10m of EU funding in recent years.

So, are you a cynic or a realist?