Don't be conned by coalition, says MP

Ms Jamieson — former Education and Justice Minister in the Scottish Parliament and ex-Deputy Leader of the Labour MSPs — told the Co-operative Party’s annual Summerfest in St Andrews that Conservative and Lib Dem MPs could not be trusted to deliver a co-operative agenda.

Dismissing attempts to align the ConDem coalition with the Co-op ideal, she said: “We build a different kind of coalition in support of co-operative values and principles. The Tories’ fundamental belief is to support private business and we should be very wary of their apparent support for co-operatives.”

As for the Liberal Democrats, Ms Jamieson — elected as MP for Kilmarnock & Loudon in May — said the junior coalition partners had acquired a taste for power and “are not about to give it up”.

She said the coalition she was interested in building would involve anyone who shared Co-op ideals and its belief in a better society, including community groups, environmental groups and trade unions. 

Eighty Co-operative Party members attended the four-day event and Jim Lee, Secretary of the Scottish Party, told the News that the involvement of politicians from the Scottish Parliament and local government underlined the event’s theme: that the Party would continue to campaign within all parliaments and bodies for co-operative solutions.

James Kelly, Labour/Co-op MSP for Glasgow Rutherglen and a co-convenor of the cross-party group on co-operatives at Holyrood, described how he and Co-op Party colleagues had pursued a number of issues in the Scottish Parliament including housing, energy, agriculture and employee ownership. He told the Summerfest audience: “Politics is about values and the values of the coalition at Westminster are anti-public sector and anti-community.” 

Other key speakers at St Andrews included Cllr Jack Hopkins, Chief Whip on Lambeth Borough Council, and Cllr Stephen Curran, who leads on public service reform on Glasgow City Council and was recently selected as prospective Labour/Co-op candidate for Glasgow Southside for next year’s Scottish Parliament elections. 

Cllr Hopkins outlined steps Lambeth has taken to set up a Co-operative Council which he said was about “making services more accountable”. He said people will be more satisfied with council services if they become involved and added: “For the Tories, the Big Society is about rolling back the state, but for us it is about changing the nature of the state.”

Cllr Curran said Glasgow City Council was looking to make people more aware of co-operatives. “If we are going to survive the financial crisis in local government, everyone is going to have to work together,” he said. “We need to engage with our employees and the people we serve.” He added that co-operatives could provide an ideal model for local government’s shared services’ agreement.