Joe Fortune was appointed the Co-op Party’s general secretary seven years ago, leading the party through a time of unprecedented political opportunity. Although it’s an independent, regulated party, for the past 99 years it has had an electoral agreement with the Labour Party – whose manifesto commitments include a pledge to double the size of the UK’s co-op and mutual sector.
Over his time in the role, Fortune has overseen a growth in Party membership to 13,000. The party is the fourth-largest in the UK Parliament, with 41 Labour/Co-op MPs, and has over 1,600 local councillors, alongside members in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd. In May, it will stand more than 1,000 candidates in local elections across England, Scotland and Wales – competing in about 85% of all councils.
“I’ve been focused on ensuring we become a pro-co-operative country, ” says Fortune, “that the co-operative model is a model of choice for public policy, and that the country is geared up to be able to accept that.”
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One policy area, identified early on as ripe for co-operative growth, is energy. “All of the benefits of co-operative and community ownership lends itself incredibly well to energy production,” he says. “We know that we have a model which produces fairer outcomes and has better opportunities for cohesion and energy security, and it works.”
The Party has been working on this campaign for several years – well before the current conflict in Middle East forced a spike in prices – and one concrete result is the Local Power Plan.
Spearheaded by Great British Energy, it aims to deliver 8 gigawatts of locally owned clean power by 2030. Backed by £1bn in funding, it supports over 1,000 community projects, including solar and wind, to lower energy bills, boost energy security, and ensure local ownership of renewable energy.
Announced by the UK government in February, Fortune believes “this is a historic investment in community ownership and energy in the country.
“If we get this delivery right, what we will be putting in place is a template for the future, which is this much better way of owning energy and having energy security in the country, and we’ll hopefully have it in every community right across the country.”
Another area of campaigning has been the Community Right to Buy legislation, recently introduced into England. “This is attached to the Pride in Place programme, which is all about community empowerment and community ownership,” adds Fortune. “It’s a £5.8bn programme now covering 284 communities across the country. So we’ll be heavily involved in the rollout of that.”
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Other successes led by the Party include tackling violence against shop workers and the fight against modern slavery. Its newest campaign is Community Britain, which aims to highlight the role communities are already playing in solving the country’s most pressing challenges. The goal is to reclaim the role of community as a serious political and economic force in the country – not just a feel-good afterthought.
These big projects are “all about a positive, hopeful future for the country,” says Fortune, with “shared space, shared experience and shared ownership being what we believe the country should be based on.”
The UK has seen a surge in popularity for the Greens on the left and Reform on the right. The Co-op Party has an electoral agreement with Labour, but Fortune believes the benefits of co-operation should be obvious to all.
“Yet it hasn’t been, which is really surprising to me,” he says. “Over the last 17 years of working within the co-operative movement, I am convinced of the strength of the business model. It’s fairer, more resilient, and more productive, and I have seen people with different political perspectives able to find something within that.”
What we haven’t seen enough of, he adds, is “a consistent approach to the wider proliferation of that model”. To that end, Fortune is “really proud of the leadership role that the Co-op Party plays within the co-operative movement, especially over the last 5-10 years. I think that we are in a place where we are delivering remarkable results for the co-operative movement, results that some have not thought possible before. We’re in a place where we can legitimately say we have leading co-operative commitments in Westminster, and that’s as a result of the Co-op Party.”
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Fortune believes one thing missing in how politics is covered is the often very important cross-party opportunities to promote policy areas. “The Co-op Party is clearly going to play an important part in that going forward, and has done over many years in other devolved parliaments,” he says. “But I think the benefits of the relationship with the Labour Party, from the Co-op Party’s point of view and the co-op movement’s point of view, is as clear as it’s ever been. When you’ve got a world-leading commitment to co-operative growth, that’s the partnership you’re going to focus on.”
The benefits of Labour’s commitment to doubling the country’s co-op and mutual sector go beyond UK borders, he adds. “What I’m quite enthused by now as a result of having such a strong co-operative growth agenda here in the UK, is that we’re starting to see the UK government promote co-ops more on the international stage.”
Fortune also believes this growth agenda means “we’re seeing things that we’ve never seen within the co-op movement before”, including acknowledgements of the model in Rachel Reeves’ budget and Mansion House speech; the Bank of England tweeting about its commitment to mutuals; and appearing “at the heart of the government’s most high-profile domestic policy agenda [Pride in Place]”.
“So I do think that we are seeing a remarkable moment for the co-op movement,” he says, “and I encourage the movement to seize hold of this opportunity. We’ve worked incredibly hard to get ourselves to this point, but I believe there is much more we can do in the back half of this Parliament as a result of all the hard work that we’ve all put in over many years.”
Fortune’s team includes a new assistant general secretary, Caitlin Prowle, who has appeared in the top 100 women in Westminster list for two years in a row, and now runs the party’s policy and campaigns work.
“During the first 18 months of government we’ve achieved some brilliant things,” she says. “But it’s a foundation for more. Right now, the relationship between the Co-op Party and the Labour Party, gives us the privilege of power, and we can’t take that privilege for granted.
“We don’t just have to talk about stuff. We can do it, and we can put co-operation into practice in a real and tangible way we’ve never had before.”
Image: Joe Fortune speaking at the 2026 Co-op Retail Conference (Robin Mitchell Photography)
