2020 has been a dark year for all of us, but in that darkness we have seen the very best of this country’s co-operative values, as people right across the country have come together to support one another.

Delivering change from the bottom up – an approach so central to the co-operative movement – is what saw many communities through this crisis. Whether it was co-operative pubs delivering food to local elderly people, credit unions helping families avoid loan sharks, or co-op supermarkets campaigning to end holiday hunger; people have been able to count on the support of our movement when they needed it most.

Sadly, too often that great work has been undermined by the UK Government’s terrible mishandling of the coronavirus crisis – a shambolic approach characterised by poor decision making, cronyism and a failure to listen to experts, and which has resulted in the tragedy of our death rate passing 100,000 and our economy being the worst-hit in the G7.

The British people deserve so much better than this. And this is why the Co-operative Party and Shadow Treasury team are working together as part of a ‘Co-operative Recovery Partnership’ to understand the impact of Covid-19 on the co-operative sector, and to look at how the co-operative movement and its values can help shape our economic recovery.