When the Co-op co-opt the far right

TetleysTLDR of this article 

The Co-operative Party is a centrist, middle-class fifth column that dulls Labour’s socialist edge and enables the far right, particularly Reform UK Ltd. While the Co-op Party claims to represent mutualism and community ownership, in practice it props up neoliberalism with a friendlier face, ‘ethical capitalism’ that still enables austerity and privatisation. 

Key points: 

Mutualism Without Class Politics: The Co-op Party’s model is critiqued as technocratic and managerial, offering ownership without challenging capitalist structures, a comfort zone for Labour right figures like Wes Streeting and Rachel Reeves. 

Undemocratic and Right-Aligned: Co-op MPs are not elected by party members and often align with Labour’s right, actively undermining the Corbyn-era left. Specific figures like Stella Creasy, Gareth Thomas, Anna Turley, and Jim McMahon are accused of factional warfare and complicity in smearing the left. 

Silence on Palestine and Left Purges: The Co-op Party leadership is condemned for its silence during Labour’s crackdowns on pro-Palestinian activism and its complicity in the purge of socialist voices and groups. 

Facilitating the Far Right: By sanitising politics and removing class anger, the Co-op Party creates a vacuum filled by faux-populist outfits like Reform UK. Their failure to represent real working-class concerns makes them enablers of fascism, not a bulwark against it. 

The Co-op Party is a Trojan horse inside Labour, a bourgeois, anti-socialist force accelerating the party’s collapse and opening the door to far-right resurgence. In short, the Co-op Party isn’t a force for good: it’s a red-cloaked tool of neoliberalism, softening Labour into irrelevance and helping the right rise unchecked.   

The Co-operative Party: a pearl-clutching middle-class fifth column enabling Reform UK Ltd. 

Let’s get one thing straight before the niceties: The Co-operative Party is not some harmless cuddly adjunct to Labour, waving jute tote bags and wittering about local credit unions.  It is a bourgeois fig leaf, a middle-class comfort blanket draped over Labour’s flailing corpse: one that is actively dulling the class edge of the movement, muddying socialist waters, and in 2025, making it easier for far-right snake oil salesmen like Reform UK Ltd to strut into the void. 

A veneer of mutualism for a hollowed-out party 

Historically, the Co-operative Party represented working-class communities pooling resources to survive industrial exploitation: credit unions, co-op shops, housing collectives.  But that history’s long dead. The modern Co-op Party is the Waitrose version of socialism: expensive, polite, managerial, and allergic to class struggle.  Always knowingly sold out.  They’re not radicals. They’re technocratic PR flannel wrapped in the colour red.  Their model of 'mutualism' has been rebranded as a safe, inoffensive way to talk about ownership without ever challenging capital.  It’s socialism without socialism: ownership without redistribution.  They want co-ops, not revolution, governance, not power.  That’s why they’re beloved by the Wes Streeting’s and Rachel Reeves’s of the world: people who'd rather outsource NHS services to a 'social enterprise' than fund a public hospital.  And let’s not forget that Co-operative Party MPs, technically standing as Labour are unelected by the membership.  They're appointed via backroom deals and carve-ups in safe Labour seats.  An unaccountable parallel structure inside a party that already suffers from a democratic deficit.   Sound familiar?  That’s the Blairite playbook: centralise, neutralise, privatise. 

The Co-operative Party, which claims it is a sister party to Labour and works in electoral partnership with it, has often positioned itself as a centre-left, pragmatic force with strong ties to mutualism and community ownership. However, over the last decade, especially since the surge of the Labour left under Jeremy Corbyn, several prominent Co-operative Party figures and MPs have aligned themselves with efforts to undermine or marginalise the left of the Labour movement.  Below are specific examples: 

1. Gareth Thomas MP – Harrow West (Chair of the Co-operative Party) 

• Hostile to Corbyn-era left policies: While not overtly aggressive in the press, Thomas consistently voted and acted in line with the Labour right. He was critical of Corbyn’s leadership and remained lukewarm or silent on key left-wing policies such as public ownership of utilities.
• Intervention on disciplinary matters: Thomas was part of the grouping of MPs who pushed for 'fast-track expulsions' for anti-Zionism and support for groups like Jewish Voice for Labour, aligning himself with disciplinary overreach that disproportionately targeted the left.

• 

2. Stella Creasy MP – Walthamstow 

• Key example of a Co-operative Party member involved in factional warfare: Creasy repeatedly attacked grassroots and left-wing members of the party, describing supporters of Corbyn and left-wing positions as 'cultish' and 'toxic'.
• Weaponisation of antisemitism allegations: Creasy endorsed narratives that framed left criticism of Israel as inherently antisemitic, thereby contributing to the delegitimisation of the pro-Palestinian left.
• Conflict with local left activists: Her clashes with Momentum-backed activists in Walthamstow included her publicly calling for central Labour HQ to suspend members she saw as problematic, often conflating criticism of her policies with abuse.

• 

3. Anna Turley – MP for Redcar 

• Explicit war against the left: Turley was a central figure in the legal campaign against the left-wing website The Skwawkbox, which she sued successfully for libel with help from the Board of Deputies' legal fund. This was widely seen as a symbolic strike against independent left media.
• Labour right enforcer: A vocal opponent of Corbyn, Turley lost her seat in 2019 but continued to attack the left online, describing left activists as 'scum' and calling for further purges.  She subsequently regained her seat in 2024 (Editors note: proud to be part of that scum because I saw first hand what a POS this Quisling that was parachuted into my constituency against the wishes of most of the CLP) 

• 

4. Jim McMahon MP – Oldham West and Royton 

• Anti-left rhetoric: McMahon consistently undermined Corbyn’s leadership and policies and is known to have backed Keir Starmer’s purge of the left.
• Soft on NHS privatisation: As Shadow Transport Secretary (and previously Local Government), he did not defend core public ownership principles vocally, which alienated many on the left who were campaigning to restore public ownership of transport and services.

• 

5. Paul Gerrard – Co-op Party NEC Member (2018–2021) 

• While not a right-winger himself, Gerrard was part of a Co-op NEC that failed to defend left-wing candidates during Labour’s wave of suspensions and deselections, and never challenged the weaponisation of 'standard' procedures used to marginalise left-wing activists and councillors.

6. Co-operative Party leadership silence on Palestine and anti-left purges 

• The party leadership has been conspicuously silent during major crackdowns on pro-Palestinian activism in Labour, especially during the expulsions of Jewish left-wingers like Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein, and Moshé Machover, all of whom had long-standing histories of involvement in mutual aid and co-operative campaigns.
• The Co-op Party’s alignment with Labour Friends of Israel and its general silence over the proscription of groups like [Not allowed to say their name because our wanker Government proscribed them as a terrorist group], Jewish Voice for Labour, and Labour Against the Witchhunt has de facto supported the Labour right’s effort to criminalise the left.

7. Support for Starmer’s authoritarianism 

• Many Co-op Party MPs backed Keir Starmer’s ban on frontbenchers attending picket lines, which was widely opposed by trade unionists and the Labour left.
• Co-op MPs like Stella Creasy and Gareth Thomas failed to defend Sam Tarry, who was sacked for appearing on a picket line and giving media interviews in support of striking workers, ironically undermining the very principle of co-operation and collective bargaining that the co-operative party was supposed to stand for.

While the Co-operative Party’s branding invokes values of solidarity and grassroots empowerment, many of its leading MPs have repeatedly sided with the Labour right in attempts to marginalise the socialist left.  Whether through passive silence or active participation in smear campaigns, disciplinary overreach, and de-platforming of grassroots voices, the Co-op Party has too often played a role in shutting down the very kind of radical democratic politics it claims to represent. 

Co-op MPs: Enablers of Right-Wing Drift 

In the age of Starmerism, where Labour’s leadership wouldn’t recognise socialism if it bit them in the shareholder returns, the Co-op Party offers a convenient narrative: 'We’re not abandoning our principles, we’re just doing them through a mutual!'  never mind the privatised rail lines, the outsourced NHS services, the academised schools. The marketisation remains, but with a chirpy ethical brand.  This is where the danger lies.  The Co-op Party helps sanitise austerity. It masks the cruelty of neoliberalism in the language of ethical capitalism.  It pretends there’s a middle ground between capital and labour.  There isn’t and the original founders of the Co-op knew this and this was exactly why they founded the movement.  And while these tote-bag technocrats witter about community shares and 'local delivery ecosystems,' working-class people are watching their rents skyrocket, their jobs disappear, and their towns get hollowed out. Nature and politics abhor a vacuum: Enter Reform UK Ltd. 

How the Co-op Party Enables the Far Right 

Every time Labour under Starmer parrots Co-op-speak instead of socialist policy, another disillusioned ex-Labour voter inches towards the fash.  The Co-op Party’s soft-focus, consumerist language creates a vacuum where real working-class anger should be.  It’s not just inadequate: it’s dangerous:  because Reform UK isn't winning votes with policy or intellect, they’re winning them by posing as the only people angry on behalf of the working class.  The Co-op Party, in smoothing off Labour's radical edges, is handing Farage & co. that anger gift-wrapped.  Their pearl-clutching horror at protest, class politics, or even fucking swearing is exactly the bloodless, centrist mediocrity that drives people into the arms of the right.   Let’s be clear:  the road to fascism is paved with good intentions, but it’s also lubricated by the Co-operative Party’s nauseating, compromise-at-all-costs logic.  Its vomit inducing 'we can’t possibly call for public ownership, that might upset the markets' Its 'let’s replace the Post Office with a co-op', as if Thatcher didn’t already try that with mutualised building societies, which the banks then swallowed whole.  

You want to know how Reform UK Ltd are winning council seats in working-class towns Labour held for generations?  Ask the Co-op MP who campaigned for a 'community bid' to run the local leisure centre instead of demanding government funding.  Ask the one who called Palestinian resistance 'divisive' and voted to expand surveillance powers.  Ask the one who calls for 'ethical procurement' while food banks are overwhelmed, and children are starving. That's who’s enabling fucking Reform: not the left, not the unions, not the socialists. 

A Trojan Horse Inside Labour 

The Co-op Party operates like a PR wing for capital in a red tie.  It masquerades as Labour’s conscience while actively pulling it to the right,  smoothing off the rage, draining away any impulse to fight.  It doesn’t challenge power; it cohabits with it.  It’s no accident that Co-op MPs are often the most vicious against the left.  They were at the forefront of the witch-hunt against socialists, the cheerleaders for Keir Starmer’s clampdown on party democracy, the defenders of Labour’s corporate turn.  [Organisation I can't name because of our wanker Government is proscribing peaceful protest] 'Terrorists'. The rail strikes and the BMA strikes. 'Unhelpful'.   Calling out genocide? 'Too aggressive'.  These people don't speak for the working class:  they speak for shareholders in ethical-sounding co-operatives and they are handing Farage seats on a fucking platter.

The Middle-Class Mediocrity of Collapse 

The Co-operative Party is a comfort blanket for the managerial class. The headteachers, charity bosses, and policy consultants who populate the modern Labour Party.  These are not people who’ve ever needed a strike, a dole queue, or a council flat.  They’re people for whom politics is a networking opportunity, not a lifeline. They’re not fighting capitalism, they’re updating its app. But working-class people are not stupid. They can tell when they’re being managed instead of represented.  And if Labour offers them only warm words and 'community resilience hubs' while their lives fall apart, many will walk straight into the arms of the real enemy:  the faux-populist, union-bashing, immigrant-baiting conmen of Reform UK Ltd. 

^{Sidney and Beatrice Webb: authors of Clause 4.  You could power the country on them spinning in their grave at what the Labour Party has become.}

Sidney and Beatrice Webb, founders of the Fabian Society, key architects of the Labour Party’s intellectual foundations, and committed democratic socialists, would almost certainly have viewed the modern Co-operative Party with disappointment, and perhaps outright disdain. 

1. Dilution of Socialist Principles 

The Webb’s believed in the scientific, planned transition to socialism. Beatrice Webb, in particular, wrote that mutualism and co-operativism could play a role in a socialist society, but only as part of a wider collective transformation of economic structures. The modern Co-operative Party’s embrace of 'ethical capitalism' and vague community ownership schemes without a clear break from neoliberal markets would strike the Webb’s as politically timid or even reactionary.

Beatrice Webb in 1921:
“The co-operative movement must eventually choose whether it is to become a department of capitalist business, or a part of a socialistic state.”

Today’s Co-op Party, happily operating inside a capitalist framework and cosying up to figures like Wes Streeting and Rachel Reeves who defend private involvement in public services would look to them like it had chosen the first path.

2. Middle-Class Managerialism Without Worker Control 

The Webb’s were elitists of the left, believing in a well-educated administrative class to help deliver socialism, but they also believed in worker democracy. The modern Co-op Party’s top-down structure, lack of member involvement in selecting MPs, and its function as a vehicle for centrist, anti-left Labour politicians would be deeply concerning to them. They would see it as a managerialist clique, using the language of co-operation while distancing itself from actual working-class empowerment or democratic accountability.

3. Failure to Confront Capitalist Power 

The Webb’s were cautious reformists, yes, but they were reformists aiming toward socialism. The Co-operative Party of 2025 defends markets, appeases corporate interests, and refuses to challenge the fundamentals of wealth and power in Britain.  Its silence on the privatisation of the NHS, on the financialisation of housing, and on the Labour Party’s abandonment of public ownership would be seen as a betrayal of the socialist direction the Webb’s intended. 

Sidney Webb once said:
“You may divide the world into the capitalist and the co-operator, and we choose to belong to the latter. But the co-operator must also be a socialist, else he is merely a more kindly capitalist.”

Today’s Co-op Party chooses to be capitalist, and that's precisely the sort of thing the Webb’s warned against.

4. Complicity in Labour’s Right-Wing Drift 

The Webb’s helped design Labour as a political expression of the organised working class, with a clear economic programme aimed at tackling poverty, inequality, and capitalist exploitation. The Co-op Party’s role as a loyal junior partner in Keir Starmer’s war on the left, particularly its silence during the witch-hunt against socialists and pro-Palestinian members, would disgust them.  They would likely see the modern Co-operative Party not as a reforming force, but as a barrier to socialist progress, enabling Labour’s descent into managerial centrism and clearing a path for reactionary populism.

In short The Webb’s would have regarded today’s Co-operative Party as a hollowed-out, bourgeois distraction, a far cry from its radical potential.

Where Sidney and Beatrice Webb hoped for a co-operative movement as part of a planned socialist transition, they would instead see a toothless club for middle-class politicians who use co-operative language to obscure their alignment with corporate interests and the neoliberal state. They’d undoubtedly call it a betrayal. 

If the Labour movement wants to survive, it needs to stop listening to the ethical managers and start listening to the angry people on the doorstep.  Because as long as the Co-operative Party helps smother class politics in red ribbon and chamomile tea, the far right will keep growing. 

And don’t let the middle-class twats cry 'divisive!' when we call this out.  You know what’s divisive?  Allowing fascists to win while you polish your Fairtrade credentials. You know what’s dangerous?  Pretending we can compromise our way out of collapse. The Co-operative Party aren’t the conscience of Labour, they’re its cancer. And if we don’t cut them out, Reform UK Ltd. will finish the job.

And a personal note to Anna Turley: fuck you - you're not one of us.  We had your card marked from the outset.  You never were and no one in Redcar wanted you.  You lost your seat in 2019 not because of Corbyn, but because of you, because of your arrogance and because you didn't give a fuck about the people of Redcar.  Your best result was on the back of Corbyn in 2017.  You only regained it with a slim majority because of the national hatred of the tories and Reform split the Tory vote.  Enjoy your short tenure, you won't be staying in Redcar long and good riddance when you are kicked back to Hampstead or Islington or wherever the fuck it is you are from.   

A bit of shameless self-plugging here.  This is www.TetleysTLDR.com blog. It's not monitised. Please feel feel to go and look at the previous ones on the website and if you like them, please feel free to share them.