Charity Commission chair William Shawcross appeared to momentarily forget where he was during a speech at Mansion House on Wednesday night – or at least which group of people he was addressing.

Shawcross was midway through his presentation to a large audience of both voluntary sector and City figures about the role of the regulator in revolutionising philanthropy, when he seemed to drift off for a moment into an altogether more familiar setting.

He had been regaling the audience with some thoughts about the history of philanthropy and the role that various groups have played over the years in promoting and practising it – groups including the monarchy, women and poor people.  

He insisted that it was “wrong to think of charity as solely the preserve of the rich”, and then added: “I mention all this to remind Conservatives…I mean to remind ourselves….” - but whatever it was he was reminding us of could not be heard above the sharp, incredulous intakes of breath from the crowd.

Wikipedia defines a Freudian slip as: “An error in speech, memory, or physical action that is interpreted as occurring due to the interference of an unconscious ("dynamically repressed") subdued wish, conflict, or train of thought guided by the super-ego and the rules of correct behaviour.”

Shawcross delivered the Mansion House keynote exactly a year and a day after civilsociety.co.uk published its first interview with the then-new chair. Our introductory sentence of that interview read: “It was always going to be difficult for William Shawcross to avoid the perception that he has been installed at the Charity Commission as a friend of the government, someone who would be sympathetic to the Conservative agenda after six long years of That Bloody Labour Woman.”

Of course, everyone makes mistakes and those with high positions in public life are under plenty of pressure, but it will only become more difficult for Shawcross to shake off that perceived cosiness if he keeps making Freudian slips like that one.