The Labour Party and the Co-operative Party are distinct organizations — but a pact agreed in 1927 allows candidates to stand on behalf of both parties.
In practice, Co-operative MPs tend to follow the Labour line — but the party has a distinct focus on mutual ownership, community businesses, and credit unions. It argues for democratic control of services and businesses by the people who use them — and supporters say this program offers up real hints about how Burnham will now govern.
Since returning to the Westminster frontline, the new prime minister has hardly been shy about his administration’s support for the co-operative drive.
“If people, in 1844, could form the co-operative movement in Rochdale to lower the price of food, then why can’t we act now, with similar courage, to make life better?” he asked in his first major speech after winning the Makerfield by-election. That was a direct callback to a group of working-class weavers — known as the Rochdale Pioneers — credited with founding the modern cooperative movement by pooling wages to set up a worker-owned store at a time of soaring food costs.
The Co-operative Party was “created for a slightly different purpose” to Labour, says International Development Minister Kirsty McNeill — a Labour and Co-operative MP like Burnham, It is about getting a better deal “as a consumer in the marketplace and where you live.”
“It’s going to be a moment of unprecedented opportunity for the co-operative movement,” says Caitlin Prowle, the party’s assistant general secretary. “I believe that this new team is very serious about rewiring our economy, rewiring society and shifting power.”