Why Andy Burnham is no ordinary Labour prime minister

LONDON — It took more than a century, but Britain’s Co-operative Party now has one of its own in No. 10 Downing Street. Andy Burnham is the first Labour and Co-operative MP to become prime minister — a milestone the longstanding, worker-focused movement’s supporters hope will lead to a radical overhaul of the way Britain works. The new prime minister is among seven Labour and Co-operative Cabinet ministers, including Deputy Leader Lucy Powell, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds and Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh, along with more than a dozen ministers and parliamentary private secretaries from the movement. 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.” McNeill says: “The fact that we have our first Co-operative prime minister ever is a really extraordinary thing in the history of our movement.” Anywhere but Westminster Burnham’s focus on devolution and the establishment of a distinct No. 10 North in Manchester are early hallmarks of his co-operative philosophy, the movement’s supporters say. The PM’s narrative about redistributing power is a “deeply co-operative value and principle,” Prowle argues. One of Burnham’s opening actions as prime minister was to cut business rates for pubs, clubs and live music venues by 20 percent from next April, an immediate play to support community organizations. He’s also pledged to give mayors a share of income tax revenues for the first time, so that communities directly benefit when their economies grow. The movement has meanwhile sounded supportive towards suggestions Burnham could transfer ownership of widely-criticized water companies from shareholders to customers — dubbed mutualization. Ownership is “the ultimate form of power,” Prowle says, adding: “I would hope to see co-operative and community ownership unleashed on a much bigger scale than what we’ve seen so far.” Anneliese Dodds, a former minister in the Keir Starmer government who is also a Labour and Co-op MP, says the party is “really about ensuring that people feel a genuine stake in their communities.” Co-operatives, she says, are “the organizations that move in first to areas that are experiencing challenges and they’re the last to leave or the only ones left standing.” Caitlin Prowle speaks onstage during a panel discussion in London, England on June 5, 2025. | Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Image