Members of the New Leaf Co-op, Edinburgh. Image: New Leaf Co-op.
Theresa May’s Government has been putting forward proposals that you might expect to be music to the ears of the left. These have included strengthening communities’ abilities to buy important assets, putting workers’ representatives on boards, a right to mutualise – to turn ordinary companies into John Lewises – in certain circumstances, more investment for small businesses.
Like the ‘Big Society’, they are the latest in a trend in the right wing’s appropriation of ideas from the left and the co-operative movement. They have been met with a mixed response from both left and right, and from small and big business, and with a cautious, limited and sceptical welcome from the major UK co-operative sector body, Coops UK. Others have called out the mutualism agenda as a way to privatise the NHS and dismantle the public sector.
